 I woke up from my nap after working all night, and I noticed how disconnected from Sorus I felt. I kind of just did some mind-watching as I was running my errands and feeling nauseous, and noticing that I had a lot of fear come up around Beverly's safety going down to the trailer and then getting a ride back, and just noticing how much body stuff I have going on. I just noticed how much fear I have about letting those things surface and just giving them to the Holy Spirit. I feel guilty, I feel unworthy. And I noticed with Beverly's trip I kept, things kept surfacing over the weekend and I just kept seeing her having this Holy encounter, but there's something deeper coming up and I'm not even sure what it is, and I'm willing to just go into it and heal this. Were you feeling thoughts of maybe fear for her safety in some way? Basically that was it. I realized today. And so I've tried to look into my past and see what that's touching in me because obviously there's some thoughts about really being that open and that vulnerable with God that I'm feeling really unsafe and unsure about doing that. There's a line coming to me from the course, I think it's lesson 48 where he starts to go into it. The lesson is there is nothing to fear. And he says in truth or in reality there is nothing to fear. But he says this is not true for those who believe in illusions. And once again he starts teasing it out, starts with the fact of it in reality and then he starts to say as long as you believe in illusions then you do have a need to fear because of the way that you've defined reality and defined yourself and everything. And I think it would be interesting to just trace in that whole sense of vulnerability and risk because in different newsletters and different things that I've read oftentimes the spiritual journey seems to be one of, it's even described as opening up. You must become vulnerable to see within, see what's within you. And to me, I just see that as that's still the way it seems to the ego. That is the ego's interpretation of looking at my beliefs in my mind is it's a very risky and vulnerable undertaking. And of course it would be perceived that way to the ego because that it knows that if this process continues then it is out of business so to speak and so through its lens of course it would have to be perceived that way including someone in your life being a symbol of someone who's really opening up to the Holy Spirit and that guidance and seems to be throwing caution to the wind in terms of protections and safety measures and so on and so forth. Those leaps of trust, even if someone is a symbol for that in our life can be perceived as threatening to ourselves if we're seeing that through the ego's lens because it's like, it gets back to that thing, it's oh my gosh, if someone can do this then that means I can do this and oh my gosh, I don't know if I can do this, you know. So what are you selling home is that what you decided to do? I haven't talked to you. Oh, Harvey, what's the rest of the story? Okay, I'm going to have a date now and I'm going to scoop here. I hitchhiked back. I had a wonderful Holy Encounter with a trucker. And it's great riding up that high. It's a wonderful symbol for being above the battleground. I got back this morning and it was real easy. I mean, I wouldn't hesitate to go down and back again that way. I mean, now that I've done it and I notice how, you know, probably even a year ago I would not have entertained that ideal seriously. You know, I wouldn't have felt that was a smart thing to do. And now it's like, it's fine. I have done similar things in the past and initially knew that this would all work out. I mean, I was excited that you were taking the risk if there was a risk to take. Actually, there wasn't. But there's something else. One of the things that's surfacing is that I know that I don't want to hide from God. I'm listening to the ego beliefs about there is something that I don't even know yet about myself that's going to surface. And then it's the risk of abandonment, thinking that God will leave. Some dark secret that if I keep allowing things to come up, it's going to pop up. There's a basic belief that an ego system, the belief in the ego system is that darkness can hide. And the teachings of the Course is that one of the first initial things that this teacher of God goes through is he soon starts to look at the idea that darkness cannot hide. And Jesus describes this as a period of at times pain, acute pain. And it can even be delayed and drawn out that the mind is still going back and forth of this thing of whether it can hide. And then it's like once it gets transcended, the mind comes to a place where it starts to see that even if it could hide, why would it want to hide anything from God? That's where the ease starts to come in, where it starts to feel safer and safer. And in one sense, Christa, I mean our sessions this week demonstrated to me about how strong your commitment is. I mean you were looking at thoughts, all kinds of thoughts that were coming up with different people and different things and when you make such a concerted effort to really just say, well, I don't know, I'm just going to say what I'm thinking and everything, and you are able to go through that and feel calm and loving and start to look at that. That is very threatening to the ego and in a sense a lot of times there seems like a backlash. I had to go for a gum scaling today on my teeth and my gums had not really bothered me until I went into Steve and he looked at him and he diagnosed that I have some gum recession. And then I had to go into the periodontist and then he looked at my gums and then he prodded around and now I have an abscess. All this stuff comes up about the body and it's not a place that I really want to be looking because while I'm focusing on that it's real hard to focus in on the spirit and this oneness and so I'm trying to let that go, let that go. In the meantime, I have to go for this gum surgery and all this stuff and I'm not ready to say cancel all the appointments at all. That would be totally inappropriate for me right now because I'm too fearful that there still is something with body. I can only be where I can be at this moment and where I am at this moment is that I'm still feeling that alright I'm going to go through with this gum whatever they're going to do with it but that I want to be as defenseless as possible with the nurses because I'm very fearful so I go in and I might get hyper and I was trying to work at it that way. It was the only place that I could be with this and make the appointments and just go with it but I need to really look at the sickness thing because I do know there's a part in me that sees that if we can let go of that feeling of the body being real etc. etc. that we can let go of all of this and I'm not ready to let that go yet. Somehow healing is associated with loss of self. It needs loss of the body. Which would be part of the self as the ego has constructed it. In that sense healing is feared if that's the way we perceive it. It's not surprising that having a background in nursing and medicine and physiology and health promotion and so on and so forth that the symbols that the mind can learn in the lesson and the contrast between the two ways would be played out in a way in which those are the symbols that you're familiar with. A lot of times to me I always think of the line that we have a lesson to learn and it will be learned in a form in which the mind can get it so to speak. It's not accidental that you seem to have all this medical appointment lined up and you seem to have been working in the medical health promotion field and trained in nursing, it's all kind of coming to a head because we have to really get at the contrast between mind and body and this really just offers a very direct way of doing it as well as body symptoms like you've talked about. That can be a real direct kind of a symbol to take a look at. There's a concern for bodies that listen there. Probably a lesson that's coming to mind is the beginning of 135. Actually it comes before the lesson 136 which is sickness as a defense but it starts to get at what is this thing you're so concerned about, what is this thing you're defending and maybe that would be a good springboard to start to take it in and take a look at what's going on at a deeper level beyond all these surface concerns and everything and then trace it back. Because whether it is with medications, whether it's locking doors, whether it's taking safe rides when you're being transported, the body's being transported from one to the other, those are all forms of magic. I mean we've talked about even the times when the mind's too fearful, a mix of magic and miracle may be helpful to reduce the fear and there's another section in here where, how is healing accomplished where Jesus says the mind, the patient could just simply say I have no use for this and rise up. Or it can be he says in another place that special agents seem to be ministering to the patient and in that sense going on for doctor's appointments nurses and doctors seem to be special agents that seem to still be outside the mind that seem to be ministering to the patient but that's still just a form in which the mind can handle it so to speak. That's an interpretation of the way that the mind can see that healing could occur. It seems more drawn out in that sense and there's still a fear of instantaneous healing which gets back to what we were just talking about because through the ego's lens healing is fearful if it would be instantaneous because what have I got to give up? What will be gone from me? What will I lose if I'm healed? And so it seems to play itself out more in linear time. If I defend myself, I am attacked. Who would defend himself unless he thought he were attacked? That the attack were real and that his own defense could save himself. And herein lies the folly of defense. It gives illusions full reality and then attempts to handle them as real which in a sense whenever we get into the talking about whether it's getting a safe ride from one body to the next or that these are real problems, real issues that I have to deal with and therefore that's why I'm having all these appointments and everything in a sense you have to just pull back enough to take a look at, gee I'm giving illusions full reality I'm saying even when I used to saying well this is where I'm at now or whether it's with nutrition or body symptoms or whatever when I say well this is the fact of it, this is the problem the way it really is and I've defined it as being in the world then in a sense I'm giving illusions full reality and then what else to do but what would a mature person do but then defend and take steps to alleviate the problems and everything. The definition of the problem where it makes it unsolvable it's like the things about there's only one problem, one solution and that's in the mind and once I start by defining the problem out here in linear terms in the world of form whether it's a problem with the gums or Chris and I were going into different things this weekend one of them was the thing of debts having a big debt to pay off and the integrity of paying off the debt and everything you can see how both of these things are defining the problems somebody doesn't have their money and I need to pay them back that's defining in specifics and the thing like these gums I've been diagnosed by Steve and other doctors have looked at it and then these other complications that have come in that's defining it out there in the world or in form or even to use the example of perhaps fear about Beverly's safety or whatever that would be that something could happen to that body if you open up in trust and that would be once again defining the problem is out there so it just gives us three very different specifics