 Okay, well yesterday was a big day for us because we went into seeing that the key to happiness is really where we focus our mind, where we focus our memory, our use of memory, and as long as our mind is focused on the past, we are reinforcing a belief system of separation which does prevent us from experiencing consistent happiness or constant happiness. And so you might say that the whole point of spiritual awakening is to become fully conscious that as long as you have some beliefs that are hidden from awareness, they dictate your decisions. So you may think you're a human being making these free decisions every day of what to do, where to go, but actually it's this unconscious shadow that is dictating these decisions. And these decisions in a lifetime could be called the script of the world. And oftentimes human beings have a tendency as well to believe that they have free will and free will is associated with the power of choice. But choice is a concept that was made up. There's no choice in heaven. There's no choice in the man because oneness has nothing to choose between. It's just the state of pure beingness. So choice is a concept that was made up. And as long as you have unconscious or hidden beliefs, then you might say choice is arrested, arrested by the ego. How's it there like in HBO? It's arrested development. You might say that life, so-called life in this world is arrested development because it's being dictated by unconscious shadow beliefs. And there's no freedom in that. So that's why the goal is to become fully conscious or fully aware because as long as part of your mind is unaware, or we could say most of your mind is unaware like the iceberg, then you can't experience that joy and freedom in a consistent manner. So as we go deeper, we'll start to see that the energy of happiness and joy and love is so important. And I can really feel that with this gathering we're having. We're on top of the mountain, which is a nice symbol, bathed in sunlight, nice symbol surrounded by beautiful friends, lovely energy, beautiful music. And the little child, showing us, reminding us of the innocence, how excited he got during the, there's like a chant on us. It was a prayer. It was calling upon the Holy Spirit and how energized he got from that, which is really, that is what energizes us when we call upon the Divine. And we feel that Divine flowing in us and through us. We have that wonderful feeling in our hearts like, ah, yes, this is it. This is what I am. This is what life itself is. And then the ego is just this insidious unconscious belief system which could taint all these amazing holy encounters with a little bit of hesitation. And I really like the questions that came up yesterday because they've been questions about what do you do when the reflection suddenly turns from a happy reflection to something very dark. How do you deal with an angry person? How do you deal with someone who seems to be very manipulative or deceptive? And I think the key we started to get at yesterday was if you start to bring everything back, every experience back to the mind and to consciousness, then that is going to offer you the escape. For example, how would you deal with a manipulative person or a deceptive person? Well, you would notice that if you were emotionally triggered, it would have to be the deception within consciousness that is where the trigger is coming in. It can't really be that a person is deceptive. That's more on the surface of consciousness when we get identified with being a human being. We certainly encounter what seems to be deceptive, manipulative people. But if we really say, oh, no, I'm not going to just take the common sense of it's them and how do I deal with them, I'm going to bring it back to... I just like to use the phrase, if you spot it, you got it. Especially if you feel a reaction going on. If you spot it, then you got it. If you perceive it, then you believe it. And it's just another mirror giving you an opportunity to say, maybe I should take another closer look at the roots of what I believe. Because it can't be that there's actually something outside of me that has the power to take my piece away. If the source created me as peace, if the source created me as love, then it can't be that there's some image, some event, some situation, some circumstance that can take it away. Peace of mind is not circumstance dependent. Peace of mind is not a cause by circumstances and events and people, nor is it taken away. So you can see all you're really doing is you're reclaiming the power of your mind and your consciousness, of your awareness. When you become centered in your heart, that's just another way of saying, let thine eye be single. And years ago, I know when I was growing up, when I was a child and when I was in school, I loved maps and I loved graphics and I loved drawing things. So at some point I did as Jesus for a map of the mind, give me a map of the mind, a map of consciousness, and he had me draw a bunch of concentric circles. And he said, now on the outer ring of the circles, that is your gross perceptual world. That's just this ever changing world of images that are flickering by like shadows on a screen and very much like a movie that you've given meaning to. And you call that life, you call that life on planet Earth, but that's just the outer ring of the mind, just the very outer reaches. And he said, underneath your perceptions is a ring called emotion. So if you have fear in your awareness, if you have fear in your consciousness, you still will perceive fearful events, fearful people. Because that ring of emotion is projecting that world that you see. He says, underneath this gross perceptual world, there's a ring of fear. And you know, we grow up and we like to think that we love our love songs. We like the co-commercial where everybody's holding hands and like to taste the words that you sing. Perfect harmony, you know, we resonate with all of that. And yet what we're told by the master is basically there's a ring of fear underneath. And these things that you call mountains and oceans and even the buildings and even the bodies and the people and animals, everything is projected out from this ring of fear. It's not love that makes the world go round. It's fear. And that's important. If we're going to heal, we have to get it straight. That was always what I was saying to Jesus was, give it to me straight. No color candy coating. Okay, I'm big enough now. Give it to me straight. So this ring of emotion is underneath the perceptual world. And he says you have but two emotions. One is love and one is fear. There's many derivatives. So peace, joy, happiness, so bliss, all things are derivatives of love and guilt and shame and pain and hurt and all kinds of things. Jealousy and the calling on our derivatives of fear. So we need to purify that ring of emotion for us to see a peaceful world. We will not have a peaceful perception until we have harmony within. He says when you want only love, you will see nothing else. Wow, that's the positive correlation of that ring. If you want only love, you will see nothing else. That's enough to motivate us to look inside and to purify the heart and to purify our thoughts. And to have the Holy Spirit come and flood us, literally flood our mind with love and light. And we have to welcome, as the song said, we welcome you. The Holy Spirit is not like the sentinels in Matrix, sent in on the search and destroy mission. You know, like this light going blazing, laser guns firing and zapping dark thoughts. No, it just doesn't work that way. Maybe in the movies, the hero and the light, you know, battles against the darkness. But it just doesn't work that way in consciousness. Jesus says, truth is not fighting its illusions, nor do illusions battle with the truth. Illusions battle only with themselves. We have a projection of a fearful thought system and we see a battle going on. And it doesn't matter what the battle seems to be, no matter what scale, no matter what dimensions it are, from a world war all the way down to a mosquito bite. You might say that's like that. Some people feel like when the bite comes in they're like, where is that Mazi? You know, it's like a front is a person. How dare that mosquito bite me? It seems like a minor irritation and a world war seems like a major thing. But there's really no degrees. And anything that's upsetting to your peace of mind is something that you need to heal. A little thorn in your side is not God's will. You know, even a little thorn sticking in prickling, a little prickler, is still not perfect happiness. And we are perfect happiness. We were created as perfect bliss happiness. So there are no gradations to fear and really no gradations to love. It's an even order. So then I said, well, okay, so the fear, the ring of emotions is under the perceptual world. What's under the emotions? What causes the emotions? Cognition, thoughts. A lot of times in spirituality there's artificial distinctions between the head and the heart and the longest journey you'll ever take is the 13 inches between your head and the heart. Well, Jesus is a little more sophisticated than goodness. So we don't have constantly the heads battling the hearts. And the heads are usually tied in with rationality and with thoughts and concepts and so forth. And the heart is usually associated with the feelings. But in this sense, thoughts, they do cause what you feel, your thought system. The thought system that you believe in, I'm getting down a little further there because the beliefs are underneath the thoughts, but the thought system that you believe in determines your emotions and therefore determines your perceptions. So thoughts and cognitions cannot be ignored in the equation because they're causative. They can cause your emotions. And this thought system of the ego and the thought system of the Holy Spirit really have no meeting point at all. They come from a different belief. They come from a different source. It's like when you bring darkness and light together, the light will remain. But these dark thoughts, these attack thoughts have got to be raised up to awareness and raised up to the light where they will disappear. So the problem with thoughts and attack thoughts is hiding them. And that's why I would say communes, spiritual communities, like this, we have a community today. We're all communing together with one purpose and it's very holy. We're here to get underneath the surface because when we have emotions like anger or fear or guilt, there are thoughts that we're holding onto in our mind and we have not released those thoughts. And it is our responsibility to release those thoughts. How important is it to release those thoughts? Well, in A Course in Miracles, Jesus has a workbook with 365 lessons to take you to enlightenment or salvation. And the first 22 lessons of this whole mind training program land on 23, which is, first 22 are only there for number 23. So 23 is quite important. He aims his first 22 lessons at number 23. And number 23 is, I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts. It's that important. The other ones are just preliminary. It's almost like they're just building, building, building towards a point of release. And that's really the key. If you can escape, if you can give up the attack thoughts, you do escape from the distorted perceptual world. So what's under the thoughts? The realm of thoughts, the ring of thoughts is the ring of belief. You can actually believe things about your thoughts that aren't true, which is kind of an interesting thing. So an example of that is you can believe that your thoughts are ineffectual. And this is a common belief for human beings. Like, well, there's a big, vast world of cosmos out there, and I've got some pretty crazy thoughts whirling around in my little private mind, but those little thoughts don't really have any connection to that vast cosmos out there. Actually, they do. They're more than connected. They are identical. They're more than connected. They are identical. The thoughts that you think you think, not in reality, but the thoughts that you think you think in terms of the dream world and the world that you think you see are absolutely identical. It's not even an inner and outer thing, even though it seems experientially to be that you're thinking thoughts and maybe you're not looking out and seeing anything that is too close to what you're thinking. You may be having a bad day and even you have rage coming up and you have a thought that you would love to just kill somebody, and then you think, oh, but I'm not going to do it. Because we think there's a big difference between behavior and thoughts. It's one thing to think that, but it's another thing to act it out. That's another big distinction human beings make. It's one thing to think it. It's another thing to do it. No, actually, there's no distinction. You will never make it back to heaven or Nirvana thinking you want to kill somebody. It's not like God and Jesus are at the gates and want to, well, you've had a lot of times you've thought of killing somebody, but we're going to let that go or let you in because you didn't do it. If there didn't, then you didn't. So we'll let you in though. Everything is unified. Everything I think and say and do teaches all the universe. So one unloving thought, one scrap of attack, I mean, one tiny scrap of attack keeps you from knowing who you are, keeps you from knowing your very identity because you are created as pure love, pure love, pure spirit, and anything short of that is just an illusion. It's just a trick meant to be released. So the belief is, you can see with this ring, the perception is caused by the emotions. The emotions are caused by the thoughts. The thoughts are caused by the beliefs. Oh, Holy Spirit, tell me there's something underneath the beliefs. Tell me there's something at the core of my chart. The power of prayer, the power to free my mind, just as I seem to use it to imprison myself. So tell me there's something deeper, still than beliefs. And that is prayer, that is desire. That's the power of prayer to free your mind. And Christ Jesus gave us an example of freeing the mind by desiring God. The first two commandments, love the Lord, thy God with all the heart, soul, and might, love thy neighbor as thyself, those are zooming us in to the core of what our desire is. And it's interesting that even a lot of the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, covet. I like to covet. Ooh, we're getting beyond behaviors when we get into covet. We all know that too. We deal with so many things and forms and behaviors, but coveting, wishing. What am I wishing for? Well, imagine that the center of your mind is like an altar, and when that altar is clean and clear and empty, then the glory of love, the glory of God can shine through when the altar is clear and clean. But when you put things on that altar, you put things before love. You take that power of that point of wanting, of desiring, you put something else there, then that's what generates what we call the cosmos. And if anything, it could be anything. I was using an example last night when we talked about prayer a little bit that we were going to a one-in-a-nine, maybe something at nine or ten o'clock. And I was saying, well, if you want a Snickers bar, the entire cosmos wants a Snickers bar because there is no cosmos outside of you. You're that powerful. It's kind of funny. They never make movies about that, but the whole cosmos wants a Snickers bar. And someone's got to come in to save the day. They're talking about lust. Well, what about lust for the Snickers bar? That would be really funny. The Holy Spirit saves today. But what is it? Let that not be single. It's talking about unified, unified desire. And what is unified desire except creation? Wow. That's like the portal that takes the mind back into the blazing lights of creation, the great rays, the light of heaven, the pure abstract unconditional loving light that is our very being. That desire becomes the portal in the sense that when you let that night be single, when you have only, we'll say, love on the altar, or only God, when you're unified awareness, when you're unified desires there, then creation is where the journey ends. Or we might say better than where you see that there really was no journey. You never left. You never went anywhere. You've always been that love. So what we can talk about today, too, is in the context of everything I've just shared, when there is still a wish for separation, then what you have is a lot of defense mechanisms. And certainly that's what the field of psychology and the field of psychiatry has been has shown us over these last decades. It's shown us about defense mechanisms that there are so many ego defense mechanisms and the ego is protecting itself from being exposed to the light. It seems like it's against people. We can say, well, stop projecting on to your husband or stop projecting on to your wife or your boyfriend or girlfriend or repression and denial. I don't describe these mechanisms, but it's really just the ego with its tricks trying to protect itself from healing release. It's just this one little puff of nothingness. And I say puff of nothingness because it wasn't created. God didn't create it. So it truly is a puff of nothingness. It's been called a tiny, mad idea. It's been called an idea that the Son of God remembered not to laugh at. So you might say there's only one serious idea to do with this whole world and it's the ego. And we give it a name just because we want to be practical in exposing it and releasing it. Not that it has any kind of reality. Psychology talks about ego dynamics when you study psychology. And Jesus puts the word dynamics in quotations because how can something that doesn't even exist have dynamics? Oh yeah, I've got a real dynamic puff of nothingness going on there. We never hear dynamic nothingness. How was she? How was the dynamic nothingness? Just the two words don't show together at all. But we want to expose everything in a very authentic way and not hide anything. It reminds me of the number one question that I get asked around the world as I go to these different countries. It always comes down to the number one question. How did this happen in the first place? If everything is perfect love and oneness, then how did we get duality? How did we get multiplicity? How did we get conflict and war out of love? It just doesn't seem like that would follow. And one of the ways I like to address it is imagine yourself as being one of the first two Course in Miracles students on the planet and you're literally scribing and taking down the book and you're going chapter after chapter after chapter. And at one point these first two human beings to touch this divine scripture they basically, they said to Jesus pardon me, just ask how many chapters in there were just one tiny little question please how did this happen in the first place? And Jesus' answer was well you can tell by how you feel and you can tell by the roller coaster of emotions that you experience a part of the human condition that you believe that it did happen. Interesting, you can tell by how you feel that you believe that it did happen. He was just speaking in general to all human beings saying well I can tell you it's not real but you believe it. Almost like we have things called self fulfilling prophecies and pigmillions and a lot of examples throughout history of how powerful consciousness is, the mind is and you're drawing forth witnesses to something you believe when actually you don't really have all the evidence to make a conclusion that fear is real. Jesus is saying if you will come with me and examine the evidence very carefully and come with me and follow my lines of reasoning then you will have an experience that only love is real. And that's another thing about artificial distinctions a long time in spirituality rationality gets a bad name. Oftentimes the rational mind is associated with the ego not so. Actually anybody who knows about philosophy knows that in a philosophical phrase of if A and B then C and so forth you find that there is a line of logic but that everything depends on your first premise. Every logical outcome depends on the first premise and the Holy Spirit has a very different first premise than the ego. The egos is basically all is fear and the Holy Spirit's first premise is all is love. So actually rationality is not really working against your awakening, it's actually working for your awakening if you are careful enough and willing enough to follow to trust where this is going. You will say there's a first premise and we were talking about it yesterday, the divine innocence. Original innocence is the premise of the Holy Spirit and original sin is the premise of the ego and they will take you into very different experiences depending on which one you focus your mind on. If you are determined to find original innocence you must find it because it's there. In fact it's the only one that can be found. You could never actually find original sin because it's really nowhere to be found. It's like there's a veil and you go past this puff and then the ego says don't ever list this final veil because God will strike you dead and the Holy Spirit says let's list the veil together because there's only light and love behind the veil. So that's the journey that we take. And we were talking this morning, Makita and I were talking about the solvies of letting go of protecting the ego because sometimes human beings will do some pretty crazy things. Under the name of protecting feelings under the guys that I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, sometimes human beings will seem to tell lies and sometimes they're even called little white blacks but I didn't want to hurt their feelings. I wasn't going to tell them the truth because the truth hurts. You see, if you follow that line of thinking the truth hurts, then you would protect someone from the truth. Whereas we're saying it's important to not protect the ego and expose false thinking and go on an authentic spiritual journey to come into a state of integrity where you can let the Spirit speak through you from a place of certainty, from a place of clarity and realize that you don't really have the power to upset anyone. That's just another ego belief that you have the power to upset other people. And that's a big one in the sense that as long as you believe that, you seem to be walking emotionally and psychologically on egg shells afraid to say what you need to say. Say what you need to say. We give all those songs. You will let it come out. You will let it express and extend because it's coming from strength, it's coming from clarity, it's coming from certainty. And Jesus again is an example of that. He spoke from clarity, he spoke from gentleness, he spoke from weakness and it seemed like the people around him took offense to some of his words. In fact some would seem to be greatly offended until it grew to the point after three years that there was a mob that said, crucified. They were so offended they wanted him dead and out of there. And yet all he was doing was extending love. So that's an important thing to remember on the spiritual journey that it may seem as if people perceive and take offense at love. But it's just that the ego is offended. Love never offends. Love doesn't have the power or the capability to offend. It's just the ego is offended. And I think most everyone here in the room has experienced that when you've gone on your spiritual journey there seems to be the naysayers. There seems to be those that show up and say, what are you doing? That's crazy. You're wasting your time. You're often foolish pursuits that will get you nowhere and those are just the doubt thoughts of the ego coming up, floating up into awareness. It's not really them that are telling us these things. It's our mind still believing in two thought systems and as we're going through the purification process we're letting some of those attack thoughts percolate up to the surface of consciousness and they seem to get acted out in the characters. And they seem to get acted out in the environment as well. But all is well if we just start to realize that we just have to let them come and let them go. They can't really hurt us. They can't really take away peace. So I mentioned this movie yesterday called 50 First States. I think most everyone has seen 50 First States. I think it's one of the few parables where people all have seen them. Because Nikita has some clips that we could watch. One of them. Protectionism. You want to share with us about it? I don't know anything about it. Rather than I heard that it was a conversation it's something about protectionism and I just only found one. Is that under the name protectionism? It'll be the one. We'll watch it. I'll just jog your memory a little bit about 50 First States. But the character Lucy played by Lou Barrymore she has in her had a car out of a B.O. accident where she's swerved and she hit a tree head on and she had a head injury. It's a very serious head injury and so she has a memory problem. This movie is so great because you can see how this relates to the human condition. The human race had a collision and it seemed to be a pretty big collision and it's got a memory problem which we discovered yesterday. It could have serious seeming consequences this memory problem by taking such a powerful line and focusing on a mistake instead of focusing on the correction and reliving that mistake over and over and over Lucy is living her same day over and over because she's had a head injury. We can say that the sleeping son of God had a mind injury. There was a collision somewhere supposedly and there's a mind injury going on here and there's a memory problem distorted memory. There's definitely some amnesia going on with human race. It's like an amnesia of love. We get little flickers coming through but it's not enough to break through what seems to be a pretty total amnesia because love doesn't really come in bits and pieces. It's an eternal state of mind so if we're not aware of it then that's the amnesia. But what's fun in this movie I actually went to Oahu where they filmed this movie and I said, did you take me to that shack? I want to go see that shack where she's got baseball waffles and little houses out of waffles and the guy with the big cleaver and they have spammed, spammed eggs and spammed there and all this stuff. They just filmed that shack in the movie and they took the shack down. There's no shack. The characters in the restaurant are quite protective of Lucy. They don't talk to her about what happens. They're trying to protect her feelings. She's being molly cobble. She's being pampered. She's being handled with kids' love and human beings have a tendency to do that. Human beings don't like hurt and anger and injury. They want to stay in pleasantries and make it all nice. But it doesn't always heal things when we try to make it all nice. Even if we had a wound on our skin and we were so concerned about the wound that we said, I'm just going to protect that. This over-prediction would prevent it from healing because it would prevent the oxygen and it would prevent the sunlight. It would prevent the scab from forming if you put a tight cast on top of a wound. And that's emotionally what is going on with relationships a lot of times is we're so concerned about losing the love or making waves or causing ripples in a relationship that we cover over and protect. So not only in this movie clip will we see that the people at the little shack, the restaurant where she has breakfast are protecting but her father and her brother are protecting. So, you know, sitting down and saying, honey, there's just a funny thing going on with your memory. And you had a bad accident and we love you there's all these people that are here people at the hospital, we're all here to love you and everything but there's some distortions going on with the memory. Instead of doing that she's being adjusted to her memory problem. And that's what's going on with the human condition, human race. Everybody's so concerned about disturbing someone else that they're pleasing and adapting and adjusting and it's like that old story about the emperor who has no clothes on. And he's told to finally go, he's not wearing any clothes. When everyone else in the society is playing the game pretending that we're not going to say anything about him being naked. It's not good to talk about naked. So they pretend he's okay pretending he's normal. And there's a lot of pretending things are okay, things are normal and it's about the seeming separation from God or the fall from race. There's a lot of positive thinking almost as if we put enough creamy white icing on top of this fall from grace and maybe it'll go away. And what we realize is we have to start exposing it in a very direct open way. Imagine, I think maybe there was a clip called the invention of lying. The characters in the invention of lying they cannot, they have to speak their thoughts and so everybody is candid. You can imagine what that would do to dating and everything else if you went on the first date and it's almost like you had dating Tourette's where you have to speak all of your thoughts on the date without censorship. That's another clip we'll try to show that one too but that's the reason that there's so much hiding is going on is because people don't want to reveal these attack thoughts that are still in there. They feel like that's not going to help the relationship and it's not going to help you get a second date. Don't reveal your attack thoughts on the first date. Don't expect to get a phone number or a callback. I'm going to reveal my shadow on the first date. People don't do that. But that's the human condition and a lot of hiding and protecting that's going on. So in this movie Adam Sandler has kind of turned it into a comedy but it's really profound for all of us to start to say we need to be authentic. We really need to. There's too much pressure in trying to hold back and hold it in and it's more like saying to yourself and to your brothers and sisters can we not agree that we need healing? Can we not agree that we shouldn't hide and protect these dark thoughts because how are we going to learn they're not real if we keep pretending they are and hiding them because we believe they are real. How are we ever going to have a free mind? Did you ever play what was that? That movie Ghost in the graveyard? It was a movie or it was a game we played but at the end it was Ali-Ali income free. Everyone comes in free at the end. Everybody can stop the hiding. That's really when we're asking the Holy Spirit to flood us today and the Holy Spirit is saying can Ali-Ali income free? Everybody comes in free. I'm not holding anything against you. Nothing you've ever said or done is held against you. It's time that we can just stop the game. We won't play the game of hide and seek. It was a movie called The Bad Sea. The Bad Sea. It was a black and white. Do you remember? So then in the end everybody that was in the play you know how they used to do. You'd come out and bow after your performance. Like is it? Just a night, yeah. It's like a thing in theater. Even the ones that played the villains they come out and they take a bow. And everyone cheers for the performance. But no one's fooled. And if we could do that in our relationships imagine somebody's just blown up at you and they just listen. And they just scream their name. You just go oh, wow, that's just so good. That's just the best angry evil racing person I've ever seen. Come on, hi everybody. Let's tell everybody to get angry. Imagine that you actually could do that. Imagine how you would set everyone free. You would set the captive screen with that. And if nobody took it seriously. That was almost convincing. That was almost convincing. It was such a good actor. So because really what you're doing like I said if you start to see that there's not really an external world it's just your thoughts. Imagine you could say that to those raging thoughts. Thank you for sharing. Ooh, good villain. Not me, but there's a good villain. I don't buy it, but there's a good villain. You know, there's a freeing. You're releasing the hold that's reminding us. It's a joke, yeah. It's a joke, yeah. Jesus even uses the word joke in A Course in Miracles. It's fun to hear joke. The word joke comes from Jesus Christ. He says it is a joke to think that time could come to circumvent eternity. You see, his happiness is always coming from an eternal state of mind. That's what makes it a joke, is that that parenthesis in eternity that Joel Wilson had talked about, you can't put a parenthesis in eternity. It's a joke that think you can kind of circumscribe it. Okay, this is a one clip. One clip of fifty first dates. And I think it's segmented here. It's just like a little movie. Tiny, tiny. This is why in relationships, when you try to smooth things over and at least things and adapt and adjust to what someone else is thinking or you believe someone else is feeling or whatever, I call that people pleasing and the bad day will come. The bad day will come because it's like trying to go against the healing laws of the whole universe by adapting and adjusting to a lie and believing that that adjustment to the lie is compassion. You see how sneaky the ego is? Because if it can get you believing that you're being compassionate by protecting other people, by protecting people's feelings and so forth. Anybody knows the value of intentional communities, the value of open communication, the value of having friends that will tell you things from their heart and not tell you what they think that you want to hear but because they love you, tell it to you straight and say, you might want to take a look at this, you might want to take a look at that. There are jealous reflections of dear, close friends bringing the Holy Spirit through them and messages to your mind about how you have to heal and there actually is a lot of darkness that has to come up. Why would you keep pushing it down? Why would you keep covering it over trying to make a pretty, pretty world when actually the ring of fear has been exposed? You're going to have to face the ring of fear sooner or later. You want to become fully conscious. You want all the darkness to come up so you can let it go out. The parallel in this world is like if anybody has ever seemed to have the flu and that feeling of the up-check coming where you try as you may to hold it down and you realize a strategy that is going to work even though you may seem to delay it a little bit, it doesn't... you can't. It's part of the seeming healing up and out. That's very symbolic of how it works with the emotions in the mind as well. So we're seeing here at this point that we just saw the gig is up, so to speak, the whole game of pretense has collapsed. And think how many romantic comedies are based on the same formula. The people come together and they try to adapt and adjust to each other so they can fall in love. It's almost like a contrived way of trying to fall in love through hiding and protecting. And then at some point that's always part of the formula. The big blow-up comes and then the big forgiveness comes. We see those movies over and over and over where the blow-up comes and the big forgiveness comes. So here, yeah, and the make-up sex or something and then it will recycle and recycle and recycle until there's another big blow-up. So as we see in this movie now that the lie has been exposed about really the cover-up has been exposed. Now we're going to see that the wound has to be exposed as well. And then there's a reinterpretation and a healing that has to come in the mind from reorienting and reinterpreting once that wound is exposed. But as long as no one's talking about the wound and no one's even acknowledging the wound then it's just projection, people-pleasing, protectionism. That's what this whole world is. Even when such things as if you're going to try to hunt external terrorists with weapons and putting terrorists in prisons and everything, you see the whole system of this world is backwards and upside down. The terrorist is the ego in the mind. It's these dark thoughts, these attack thoughts that are buried in the subconscious mind. That's the terrorist and the way that you heal it is expose it and see it has no real effect. It was just you were drawing forth unreal effects and circumstances while you still believed in it and then when you let it go and no longer believe in it anymore, amazingly the whole world heals. The whole world lights up. So this is a good example we'll keep going here with Lucy. So Adam Sandler is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. Now he gets ahold of the scrapbook. It's the same images, it's the same photos and time and space but now it's just going to have a new purpose. Exposing, healing, integrating. I'm sure some of you have done the same thing I did where I went through back my old scrapbooks. My family took a lot of photographs back in the day. Nowadays like my sister with her kids, she videotaped every birthday. They can basically go watch their faces and nuances but it's basically the Holy Spirit using the symbols to say, okay we need to bring this in awareness. We have to break the repression and the denial about the wound and allow the wound to come up in the context of we're here to love you and support you. And what this is is the reason that in relationships that people hide so much, even intimate relationships, they will keep a lot of aspects of their mind private because it's the fear of abandonment, it's the fear of rejection, it's the fear of being turned away from. The mind is so accustomed to hiding and protecting these thoughts because it's covering over a lot of deep unworthiness and every human being has this deep pool of unworthiness like I'm not really of love. So that when you have a partner or something and it's kind of like there's a part of the mind going imagine that, a partner that's with me or something because it's so dark, there's so much unworthiness down there and to keep the partner is to keep, in the ego sense, to keep those dark parts hidden even though it just doesn't work that way in relationships those dark parts, they come up they're designed to come up. The whole healing system is to let the darkness come up and it seems like we're doing this with relationships but it's really just our mind is allowing this stuff up so we can have it reinterpreted by the Holy Spirit because in the end the darkness isn't real why isn't it real? Because God didn't create it but we believe it's real. We hide it and then we keep our relationships more on a surface level because we don't want to go too deep because it could trigger the dynamite that's underneath that out of control part that feels very psychotic or very schizophrenic it's almost like that part is hidden because you don't want that up too much otherwise you might not be deemed to be a fully functioning adult, mature human being. You could lose the title you could become one of the sick ones pretty quick pretty quick, the diagnosed ones and then the locked up ones there's a whole scenario in there that's tied into this hiding and protecting but we can see here now Adam Sandler he's just taking it home and he loves her and he wants to be able to reach her in a way that's authentic so that the love can grow and blossom and can be really true deep authentic love not this kind of game playing that takes so much energy we all know that it's just it takes enormous energy to play the game the brother is a great representation of the ego voice even though he must be exhausted from doing it the way they've been doing it as soon as somebody tries to show him a better way that's exactly how the ego starts to talk protecting her this is a great plan that's our family system you're an outsider don't mess with our family system even though he's protecting such a ridiculous man painting the wall every single night and watching them to not upset her feelings because we love her we don't want to upset her and that thing goes on in all kinds of relationships parent-child relationships many relationships it's almost like we just don't trust that letting all this up and clearing all this out will take us back to the light we think from the ego's perspective that we're just going to be lonely and grow old and have no friends and have no family and be a bag lady be homeless the ego is saying oh yeah expose your thoughts and new feelings and see where this goes and it's got a whole scenario in our mind instead of having expanding circles of mighty companions that are all authentic with us and keep allowing us to keep exposing and going higher and higher in consciousness back to the light the ego paints this very dismal thing like you will pay for this the rest of your life and you will end up cold and lonely and desolate living in your car those things are in there here we go he's going to turn the tables here so that's great otherwise what the videotapes seem to be in here we're playing over and over to give a context for the healing is really what an authentic spiritual path is it doesn't really matter what the form of your path is but you need to be reminded of the context of this awakening otherwise it's too easy to get lost into the ways of the world just get lost into serving time on planet earth between morning and night working a job doing all the things you have to do survival and trying to pack in some excitement to counteract the boredom of the human condition and so the videotape is really like this says above remember it's a sign of hope it's a sign of ok we're not going to let go of undercurrent that has to be brought up you know we're going to expose the shadow every day and get into the joy of exposing the shadow start to see that that's actually the point of all of our relationships is exposing the shadow even friends can't help you in this journey unless it's the purpose underneath the friendship that's for awakening and we've all had that experience when you come to some really important points in your life there's crossroads and friends can either speak from the ego or they can speak from the spirit they can speak from fear and say be careful that's dangerous don't do it I wouldn't do it or they can speak from the encouragement of the spirit like go for it I'm right there with you I'm right behind you that's why we have to so get in touch with the spirit we need this mind training we need this focus program of transferring our thoughts from attack thoughts to those thoughts of joy that are underneath the thoughts of joy and love are always there they're still in our mind but they're so covered over by these attack thoughts that we have to have that and really that should be your question in terms of relationships like who's in your life who do you surround yourself with on a daily basis it's like do they support your awakening that's the choice of the spouse do they support my awakening forget all the ego reasons for having a spouse forget all the ego reasons for having a boyfriend or girlfriend do they will this support my awakening are we in agreement that there's a mirroring going on here are we in agreement that we have we share a huge need to have this darkness exposed and you see how much faster it's going to go when you have that agreement and if you don't have that agreement then you're still playing the game that I do enough or will you leave me you see it's still pressurized it's still dependent and also this idea that relationships have to be so fixed I'll let you in on a big secret people aren't really people what they aren't people are thoughts people are thoughts wow and when we start to think in terms of relationships we put a lot of pressure on to maintaining something but imagine if you had a very dark negative thought that just kept up in your life over and over and over then you have to start to say if people are thoughts then why is this thought reoccurring in my mind and in my dream you see because it's obviously there because it's still desired if desire is our core we must still want it even if we're not consciously aware of it we must still want it and therefore that's why it's so important to be able to speak it to say this is what's important to me in my life this is what I want in my life and I'm not going to compromise and just play pick a part pick a role play the roll out over many years all for some scraps of something that could be feel good in this life because the ego has ways of inventing lots of feel good emotions that are actually part of fear and when we stay addicted to those feel good emotions that are part of fear we stay addicted to the fear itself and then it's very much that Jesus says the secret of salvation is but this you are doing this to yourself that's it can seem like tough love but it's actually wonderful love it's actually saying no this is the law of karma all that I give is given to myself giving is receiving the divine law that's being exposed to our mind which everything operates out of so we're not an exception to that divine law and therefore it harkens us back to the bible as you sow you reap that's a pretty important divine law once we understand that it's going to free our mind and not imprison it if we give it over to the ego and we just say well I believe in the ego I believe in fear so I'm destined to be fearful then that's saying that you have no choice but to be an ego but an ego is not who we are we're divine love so when we give ourselves focus over to that purpose healing, forgiveness then we draw forth those witnesses so this is amazing stuff because it's very freeing for the mind is it personal gain if it I just want to have you speak because so often I think I'm getting into a relationship and it falls flat or can't I had some personal gain here that I was motivated yeah yeah that's very subtle KJ is asking about personal gain but as long as we have a belief that we could gain something for our self personally and for our self alone what comes with that in the ego scheme is that others must lose for someone to gain the ego just isn't into this win, win, win everybody gains, everybody's blessed by every loving thought that's the Holy Spirit saying every loving thought you have blesses the whole universe and as you forgive and heal you're healing the whole universe it's a huge thing but it is this sneaky ego ploy that somehow wants to believe that there's a specialness going on and there's a uniqueness to the human being and that it's good to be special and unique and that it's good to gain at the expense of others you hear that a lot of times in politics that's just the way it is some must gain even though others will lose and then it's good that those ones gain because somehow that's supposed to benefit everyone who loses you know it's crazy sometimes you hear it in political circles and those ideas reflect it back but imagine if you really had the context that every single decision you make in your life is either blessing the whole or it's it's a decision for an illusion every decision without exception and Jesus does say that decisions are continuous but you are not always aware you are making them so this unconscious mind thing it's pretty devious stuff because you've heard of stories where like parents will get divorced and then the child maybe people say the child's 4 years old and the parents get divorced and then 20, 30, 40 years later that child is in therapy talking to a therapist about I still think I had something to do with my parents divorce if I hadn't done this and said this and so forth my parents would not have divorced you see how the tendency of the mind is to take on the guilt to take on the blame and those are not not like a 4 year old is consciously thinking I'm making mom and dad get divorced but if that belief is down there pushed down in awareness and everything then that can be pushed down and has to come out maybe years later through therapy or some circumstance but it's still there so when decisions are pushed out of awareness they become beliefs they are no longer questioned whether their validity is true they are believed to be true it's very sneaky to think decisions pushed down and then there's an amazing line that Jesus says in the course he says as this involves decision no I was saying earlier there's no free will and we think that these are real choices on the surface of consciousness he says a decision is a conclusion based on everything that you believe so the decision is not going to be free it's not going to really be a free choice until you raise the shadow up into conscious awareness and when you do it's more like when they've studied the yogis and the mystics where the yogis can control their heart rate some of the things that were thought to be involuntary are actually under control of mind and consciousness when they do the studies of the yogis because they simply raise their unconscious mind up with all their mind training and they can actually choose to slow down their heart choose to speed up their heart but even more think about Parmahansa Yogananda who made a conscious decision when to lay the body aside and laying in a state of non decay for weeks talk about conscious these are great examples of raising the darkness up so that you consciously are choosing and you're choosing in love ultimately if you release the unconscious mind a lot of times people think well nobody's really in charge of for example how they're going to die or when they're going to die but Yogananda misproved that as well everything is a choice whether the mind is aware of it or not absolutely everything and not just in your personal life everything in the entire cosmos throughout all of history and it's all leading to a choice to escape the world and return to nirvana or heaven and so atonement is what Jesus calls it that's what everything is funneled towards so then suddenly your life has such a glorious purpose like oh my gosh that's what I'm here for is to accept atonement I'm here to accept the correction for the error of separation and stating it very clearly and it's like wow every day imagine making a video for yourself like the Adam Sandler character made for Lucy and every day reorienting your mind like oh yeah this is really important it's not like the Beatles song it's just another day no this is the day when I'm going to wake up this is the day that is the most wonderful exciting day of my life when I reclaim the power of my mind when I reclaim my power of choice to choose correction instead of blindly walking through error believing that things are just happening to me that are beyond my control that's probably the the saddest aspect of human condition is the belief that there's all these external forces and conditions that are outside of you that are twisting and determining how your state of mind is going to be like a victim at the mercy of a vast external world and how exciting to think that we are here to support each other for a brand new way of living so we don't know what form that will take I never could tell the way the direction, the form of the life of David was going but I valued equality I valued open communication I valued respect I valued having ideas shared and allowing a whole group of ideas to be shared trusting that there was a presence among me and my brothers and sisters that was strong enough to carry us all through instead of trying to turn away and take stances and take sides and make walls and make boundaries that we could actually learn to live in harmony by having a free flow and a free exchange and you might say expression of ideas even a free exchange and expression of emotions that with this monastery that we have Living Miracles Monastery every day there's points where some things come up in expression sessions where somebody is going through something dark and it's really everyone's opportunity to see the nothingness of that darkness and to extend love so these are not gossip sessions these are not sessions where you try to put the blame on somebody these are opportunities to say wow there's a lot of deep intense emotions down there and they do need to be allowed up into the surface of consciousness and isn't it loving for myself and others to let that happen gosh that's so progressive it's very progressive and then it starts to build a momentum where people start to feel like it's safe it's a safe haven it's a safe place to express those emotions it's a safe place to get angry sometimes they're not even aware of all that's going on they just know that she's going to blow fire she blows you may have like 45 peaceful days in a row and then fire she blows and it just comes blasting up like the volcano erupts to know that it's safe that you haven't ruined anything that you haven't wrecked the relationship that you're not going to be asked to leave that you're not going to be kicked out and asked to leave because of one eruption it's really very very precious and of course the more you practice it the more you get good at having those miraculous mind shifts in your awareness that you forever are going to have to be speaking these things you can tell when they start to come up and you can start to tune into presence and just say oh please be with me take this from me there's nothing special about saying the words you don't get any brownie points or anything for that you're not any more special or different from doing it but it's just symbolic that if you've got dark thoughts that you're not afraid to hide with your trusted brother and sister then you're not afraid to hide them from the Holy Spirit if you can do it with a brother and sister then you can do it with the Spirit and if you're afraid to share yet with a brother and sister and you want to stuff it back down and hide it again it means you're afraid to give them over to the Holy Spirit so in one sense how we relate to our brothers and sisters how we live in relationships and in community is a direct reflection of what's going on in our consciousness how willing are we how trusting are we will you still love me if I let the shadow come up not that you're even trying to do it but it's like there's a sense of I need I need help in this I need to trust and there's a workbook lesson in the course it says I trust my brothers who are one with me Jesus is actively encouraging us to trust our fellow human beings it's going to go much faster if you trust your human beings and your friends instead of running away hiding it's really powerful it's like a huge speed up hey, Maria's here I can tell it's almost lunchtime my ride has showed up my wheels and David hey, another David hi there we've just watched a little clip from 51st dates we talked about exposing the air and trusting our brothers and sisters and we're not in this alone and all kinds of fun things and this is our little friend Angel here it's on the right to me it's exciting because it's just an invitation in the spirit to a whole new way of living when we look at the things the tools we have in our life the people we have in our life smart choices we can say now I value the love that's in my heart I value my opening heart expanding and unfolding I want to surround myself with everything that is conducive to my healing yes so Lisa, I'm in a place right now where I can walk away from a relationship I have with someone and I don't want to feel bad about it it's just, it's maximized and talk about that just it's done but there's this guilt that I should you know who do I think I am, the e-mail has to tell me but it's not I'm not serving him and he's not serving me in any way it's interesting because I have a Facebook friend who is in the exact exact position you're in right now in exact circumstances completely and she ended the relationship she moved to another state and she moved in with her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend who had this real authentic relationship they just got into it it's just so authentic and they share all the feelings and there's not a lot of people pleasing, sticky stuff it's a vibrantly healing relationship and she moved right in with them she's like, whoa it's great I feel like three of us are now in the relationship because it's so, there's a swirl of healing and then she said I still had some of this lingering guilt like I could have done something differently I shouldn't give up and all the different things and then she said I was watching one of your movies I think it might have been the Dark City movie where I do teaching the quantum where you go so much into the holy instant so much into the present moment that you really have an actual experience that the stories of this person and you and this that they actually never happened ever happened that they all were part of a projection of bodies and relationships that the ego had projected solely for the purpose of keeping the mind guilty with no other purpose except keeping the mind feeling like it was guilty and afraid and shamed, anxious and so forth and that's really what the teachings of the Course are is that you don't forgive your brother for what he did to you you don't forgive yourself for what you did to your brother you don't forgive your brother for what he or she should have done that they didn't do or that you should have done that you didn't do but could have went and showed us that's not forgiveness at all it's actually having an experience that it actually never happened and she's we did one of those Skype call or not Skype but Facebook calls and she was just like oh my god I can't believe it I feel so happy because it was this lingering hanging thing that was hanging over her a little bit of the Kudu Wudu Shoda shadows that were still trying to say that and she was feeling like oh my gosh I'm finally experiencing just these glimmers of how free it feels to not hold the past against my brother against my sister this man that she had dated to not hold the past to feel the maximal learning occurred to feel free to truly live in such a vibrant way and so she was just so happy she was saying and even me calling her on Facebook Messenger and you seem to be a man which is really good because I've always had an issue with telling men what I really felt in my heart always like somehow held back but I don't feel that with you is it okay can I just share anything and feel it's all part of the healing and I said yeah yeah oh I'm gonna love this this is great because it's a whole new way without kind of having that hesitation of holding back like oh don't want to rock the boat oops can't say that there oh I can't say that to have to keep discerning that and just let the spirit come through you and if there's something to say let it be said and then also get so have such an integrated healed mind that everything you think and say and do is aligned with your creator with a source so it's more like you're broadcasting to the whole universe you don't even know what gossip is you don't even know what's saying something behind somebody else's back is because of that healing look at the gospels you know if you read the gospels and you know I always like reading the bible in the New Testament because they would put Jesus's words like in red did you ever notice that the red words are gossiping he's never gossiping he never gossips in the New Testament I thought that's why they were red they're helpful his words are healing let's go into some subtleties do you notice that Jesus he never was really critical so much of people he was he was exposing a belief system and he would say things like let the dead bury the dead he was saying let those that are invested in the ego be concerned with deaths and graves and so forth follow me I always think that was one of the most loving things he could say was let the dead bury the dead follow me because this was eternity speaking if eternity speaking to time it's like don't waste yourself with more loops in time give yourself the full glory of eternity and I also notice that Jesus never really used compliments you know how human beings are always complimenting each other you know what the flip side of a compliment is it's a criticism that's getting pretty subtle because we're starting to get to the point where we start to realize that divinity is a spirit and we're getting beyond this idea that we have to judge the world positively or negatively because the positive judgments are just as harmful in awareness to peace of mind as the negative ones are it's a whole continuum there you know so many spiritualities have taught us you just have to eliminate all the negative as if we can just grab on and be positive but you have to let the whole thing be swept away by the Holy Spirit he was so there for all the apostles he was so there for every single person he met from the street but he really wasn't complimenting or criticizing never him saying hey Peter nice hairdo or you know you don't hear him if the positive judgments or the negative you really read the red it's so divine it's like it's like it's spirit speaking it's not a man and it's more than the words I think what we're going for is we want to have that attitude that we're so focused on in the presence of love that everything and everyone that we experience is touched by that love and that's what we're doing here you know the beautiful song the the baby dancing to the song calling on the Holy Spirit the more that the chant called on the Holy Spirit and welcomed the Holy Spirit to flood the room you see the baby got louder and the baby was dancing more expressive, more expressive because it was almost like a barometer of just the love and the blessing that was flowing through all of us and that's what we want our whole life to be we just want everything to be lit up around us reflecting that the moment offers that yeah the present moment offers that present moment offers that and the way that movie was kind of cool because she was so fresh and without any past or any when she watched the video for the first time she just had you know there was a bit of reaction but there was on her face it was almost like oh thank you thank you for not pretending anymore isn't that great that we can have relationships that don't involve pretense that we feel trusting enough to just let whatever needs to come come that the strength of our love can handle anything without that get out of my life without that judgment without that rejection to be able to hug somebody to be able to hold somebody when they're angry because underneath the anger is hurt they're really hurting they're crying out for love and acceptance and that's how the spirit comes through with just that holding let somebody hold be held let them shake let them cry and even if they seem to be like violent you know given the space for that we've all been through that we don't need to intervene there and try to to make them wrong or point a finger it's just that's our opportunity to be gracious and spaciousness to give them space does that mean physically leave their field to let them sit with whatever emotions arising or to actually be in the presence of that negativity or whatever is being purged to hold space and be able to transmute that that's where you really have to follow your guidance because there are times when clearly it's just time to time out like they even use the children when children get really angry and sometimes violent the teacher will go time out and they know what it's for because they need time to cool off that anything would like trigger or make it worse and there are occasionally times especially if it's a dear friend and there's a lot of of trust and everything like that when just to be held can help to start to let that go away I would say those are kind of rare a lot of times you do you are guided to kind of back off and I remember one time it's just all in our our trust and our confidence with the spirit because one time a friend of mine said she said I had a dream with you David and we were both flying on flying up through the clouds on these like magic carpets and I had a pink one and you had a blue one and we were both flying flying flying all around in the sky and then she said I looked down and I saw there was a gang war going on she looked down and she said the gang war and so she said to me quick let's fly in the other direction and I said no let's go down so we both flew in our little blankets the pink and blue blankets down there and when we landed she was kind of afraid and she said and I threw my blanket out and it was this big blue blanket and it just kind of flew and landed on everyone and everyone turned peaceful and then another dream a friend of mine had with me she said we were in a dangerous place and there was all these buildings and hiding places and there was all these dangerous forces and she said I just followed you sometimes we would watch sometimes we would drop down and go down and it was almost like one of these spy movies where you have to just make all these discerning moves and she said I was just staying real close and that's I think our walk with the spirit we want to be so connected so in presence that whatever the situation comes up we don't rely on our past learning we rely on our present trust one man who was of course a miracle student one time he was also a clown a professional clown and he was working at a circus in Philadelphia and he came out after the circus and he was in full clown gear he was going to walk home in full clown gear so he was walking through the streets of Philadelphia and a street gang saw him with switch blades and they came up and they completely encircled him my friend said and I was completely encircled and they brought out the blades you know to come and to cut me and everything and they started coming in closer and closer and closer and I said what did you do and he said I just cried out Jesus help me in my mind he didn't say it he just in his mind because it was one of those situations where he didn't know what to do because he was and as soon as he cried out Jesus helped me he noticed that his body fell to the ground and he started cooing and making baby noises and the whole group went they stopped man this guy is crazy man they they perceived he was mentally ill apparently and they fled the scene and that's how he was helped and that's a good example of don't try to use your past learning when you are confronted with a situation where it seems hopeless is cry out for help and mean it and he did mean it and the falling to the ground and making the baby sounds he said oh my God it saved my life and it was just that example of that's why we cultivate our connection with spirit because who would think in a million years to do that but that was the most defenseless thing to do Jesus always says in my defenselessness my safety lies and he just he dropped down maybe whatever he's in field position or whatever and making the baby sounds was the perfect okay it's lunchtime and we'll be back at three o'clock thank you thank you