 Those are your mighty mates. Now that's the kind of mighty companions you wanna be surrounding yourself with. That's the kind of mighty companion that you need. Number four, 56 votes. Empty the mind of people thoughts. Empty the mind of people thoughts. When you look at how, when you feel disturbed, worried, concerned, when you feel doubtful, when you feel guilty, how much do you think that fear and guilt is connected to people thoughts? If you just really were honest and started to say, okay, I feel bad, I feel terrible, what am I thinking about? Chances are you're thinking about people thoughts. Chances are there's people thoughts involved in that bad feeling, that guilt or that shame or that worry, that concern. So number four is empty the mind of quote, people thoughts. And the last one, number five with 51 votes is how to be guided through the fear of loss and sacrifice. How to be guided through the fear of loss and sacrifice. That when we deal with letting go and releasing what we're really praying for is to release the belief in loss and sacrifice from our mind, because God didn't create us as a being of light that feels loss and sacrifice. That would make no sense. Why would God create a perfect, innocent being of light and then go, oh, sorry about that loss and sacrifice feeling you have in your heart. No, God has nothing to do with loss and nothing to do with sacrifice and the ego has everything to do with loss and everything to do with sacrifice. And that's why we're praying to release the ego. So the movie today is another version of the movies that you've watched with me, some of you and love the most. Some of you remember we watched the island together where Lincoln Six Echo, you know, he doesn't like, why do we always wear white and isn't there any other color? And I don't like the food. Why can't I have bacon? And then it goes on to his friendships. He wants to have a deep friendship with the Scarlett Johansson character, Delta, something. That's another movie. And basically he slowly is curious and discovers signs and symbols that his environment in the world that he perceives is not what it seems to be. In the matrix, Neo is a hacker who basically spends most of his time before in front of a computer and then suddenly it gets a knock on the door and he sees this before the knock, he sees this thing on his computer screen, Neo wake up and then he starts to get all these signs and symbols that the world that he perceives is not what it seems to be. It's not really, it's not home. It's not loving. It's not free. It's more like an imprisonment. Like he's perceiving a prison and matrix and the matrix he's told by his teacher that basically the world has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth, Morpheus says. And everything you think and taste and touch and smell in this world is part of a prison, a prison for your mind. And then when Neo questions Morpheus even more, he basically, Morpheus gives him the first step and that is to begin to realize that he's a slave. Most of us, we don't like the idea that we're slaves. We don't like, if anybody came to you and knocked on your door and said, I have something important to tell you, you're a slave. We'd say, sorry, we don't need any of that here. But actually that's what Morpheus tells Neo, you're a slave, a slave in your mind. And so we can relate that the way we've acted, sometimes afraid, fearful, shameful, we feel at times like we're slaves of something. But we seem to have forgotten what we're slaves of because we think we can blame the government, we can blame the pandemic, we can blame all kinds of things. Our friends, our relatives, what was that Pat Benatar song? Treat me right, dun, dun, dun. A lot of us have played the treat me right song right along with Pat Benatar. Like if you wanna be with me, you're gonna have to treat me right. And that's still not recognizing that the prison is the mind. Whenever we think we're personally in prison, we still don't realize that it's the mind. We still don't realize that it's the mind that believes in this world, that believes in the ego is the prison, the ego, the belief in death, the belief in separation is the prison. It's in the mind. It has nothing to do with the world that the five senses behold. In fact, Jesus does say, when you want only love, you will see nothing else. He's telling us, if you really want to know God and you want to know love, and that's all that you want, then everything else that was make believe, everything else that was invented will disappear before you. If you want only love, you will see nothing else. I just listened to a friend of mine yesterday. I found his video on just popped up on YouTube and I've known this man for many, many years. And his name is Howard Storm. And he had a very lengthy, what they call near-death experience when he was 38 years old. He was very intellectual, very bright. He was a university professor. He's an atheist. He had a wife. He had children. He had a house. He had followed the American dream and then he died. His body seemed to die. And he had a long near-death experience where he had trouble praying even in the middle of his near-death experience because he couldn't remember how to pray. He started reciting like a forescore and seven years ago, the Gettysburg Address. He started going through the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence and everything because he couldn't even think how to pray. Now he was really an atheist. He was so convinced in the reality of this world that he couldn't even think of the words that he would put to pray. And then he went through this really hellish experience that kind of came to a point when this line came in his mind that he didn't hardly even recognize but it was from childhood when he was maybe four or five years old. And the line was, the Lord is my shepherd. And he was like, the Lord is my shepherd. And then his hellish experience, the demons started to leave him alone and back off when he remembered four words from his childhood. The Lord is my shepherd. They were like, they backed off. And then he started shouting the words out of, he was so angry, the Lord is my shepherd. And then they really backed off. And then finally he basically heard this childhood prayer and he felt to call and ask Jesus for help. And with somebody who's a tribe and really convinced atheists, that's a big step. And then from there everything turned and he was taken into this amazing experience and taken by Jesus toward the light, this giant constellation of light. But when he was told he had to go back, he said, no, no, no, I don't wanna go back there. I don't know, I don't wanna go back. No, no, no, it's terrible there. It's terrible on earth. It's nothing like the light and everything. And basically Jesus and the angels said, earth is what you want it to be. Basically, whatever you want earth to be, it will be to you. And then of course, he explains it further in the course, when you want only love, you will see nothing else. That earth isn't good or bad. It's just what, it's a projection or a reflection of your mind. And it just shows you what you think and believe about yourself. And that's why when Jesus woke up and realized he was the Christ, then he transcended the world. He had no need for images that God did not create. He didn't even need a reflection. He got to, he ran right into I amness, right into the vertical of the cross. Whoa, I am as God created me. End of story, end of story, period. There is no world, I am as God created me, end of story. Now this movie is spectacular because if you're watching the movie and you're identified with a person, being a person, then what Jesus would say is, you're identified with the body and Jesus calls the body the hero of the dream. He says the serial adventures of the body involving all these different events and circumstances are really just made up by the ego. And he's teaching us that you aren't, you aren't a hero of the dream. No matter how great you seem to make your personality self, you'll never be satisfied with being the hero of the dream that God did not create. You will never find happiness in images. Well, thank you, give it to me straight. I'm happy, I'm happy that you can tell it to me straight. Give me the truth. You know, like they say in a court of law in the United States, do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? So help me God. And today we're going to go, yes. We want the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth and so help us God. So help us Holy Spirit and Jesus. And our movie today is the Truman Show. We're going on a journey with Truman to find escape. We're finding escape from the projected world. Wow, this is no small movie at all. So what we can see with Truman, even the name Truman, true man, that by itself is a contradiction in terms because Truman is kind of implying that there is such a thing as a true man. It's implying that there is such a thing as true, that mankind or the human race is true. And even most religions teach that there's God and then there's the human race. And then they have to try to figure out how do you put those together? A God of eternal love and a human race of time and space. How do you put those together? Well, Jesus is telling us you don't. I mean, the Holy Spirit can be the mediator and show you how to look upon the world in a different way. But he's not saying to try to make yourself something that you're not. That is not the teachings of Jesus. He's saying what the Greeks said, no thyself. So in this movie, the Truman Show, we see that one of the characters in the movie begins to start to realize that the world he perceives is not what he thinks it is. He begins to see signs and symbols like a light, a serious light falling down and crashing into the middle of his street where he lives in Sehaven. Like him starting to hear things on his radio in his car, his Ford Taurus. He's driving around, going to work and he starts to hear something happening on his radio that's showing him that there are voices and thoughts behind the world that he's seeing that are somehow directing the world as if the world is nothing but actors and actresses. That it's not real at all, that it's basically there's some kind of a director behind all of these characters and this director is telling them what to say and what to do and they're part of a giant conspiracy, a giant trick designed with one purpose in mind to keep you from knowing who you are. The entire world of time and space was designed and projected by the ego for one reason to keep you from knowing your Christ identity, your eternal identity. So what a journey. If somebody told you your wife is not really your wife, your husband's not really your husband, your children aren't really your children, your house is not really your house and then they wrapped it up by saying your world is not really your world. That can sound a bit psychotic and it is. To believe in this world is the definition of psychosis. The definition of psychosis is a break from reality. So sure enough, sure enough that's what we're talking about. The entire cosmos is psychotic because it's an attempt to break from the reality of loves, from the reality of God. Is the cosmos schizophrenic? Ding, it's schizophrenic too. When you hear multiple voices, which we do every day, we have to admit we do hear multiple voices, that's schizophrenic. Ding, you know. And then you start to realize, okay, practically speaking then, what am I supposed to pay attention to now? And Truman's gonna show us the way. He's gonna pay attention to the signs and symbols. Is he afraid? Yes, he experiences fear. He's afraid of water. He's afraid of dogs. He doesn't really like going to work. Some of us can relate to that. Afraid of water, afraid of dogs and barking dogs and afraid of going to work. We're like, oh yeah, I can relate to Truman. He wants a deeper connection and he doesn't even feel that with his wife. He's got a best friend, Marlon, who he likes the feeling of having a best friend. But every time he talks to Marlon about escaping or going beyond his own perceived limitations, Marlon is going to put a beer in his hand. That's how your best buddy handles your existential crisis. Get a brusque, get a beer. And as soon as Truman decides he's ready to escape, Marlon's going to show up with a six pack. He's coming with six beers when Truman starts to think there's something more than this world. The name of the director of this, we discovered TV show involving Truman and all these actors and actresses is basically called Christoff. Christ off. Christoff. Oh yeah, that's a good name for the ego director of a fake, designed world that was designed to keep you from knowing who you are. Christ off. Off, you know, how people tell you, we talked to him and they go, no, that's off. You can say, yeah, I know it's off. Yeah, the whole world is off. Time and space are off. They're off plan. The present moment, the holy instant is on. And that's one of our themes is experiencing the holy instant by desiring it holy. That's our second theme is experiencing the holy instant by desiring it holy. And just give yourself credit that if you started to desire the holy instant, the present moment, more than anything else in the world, I guarantee you the laughter, you would start to get more and more into laughter at just about everything. You know, you would find your laughter would start to, like a forest fire would start to rip across the distorted perception of the world. And you would say, oh, now I understand what the Beatles meant in Strawberry Fields Forever. There's nothing to get hung about. Strawberry Fields Forever. You don't have to take LSD or ayahuasca to experience happiness and joy. It's right there in the holy instant. It's just like saying, here I am. I'm right here. Please, please desire me. Want me above all else. You know, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want things of this world. I want to know the Lord is my shepherd. I'll stay right there. The first part of the 23rd Psalm, I don't even have to go to the second line or the rest of the sentence. The Lord is my shepherd. So the other thing I think you'll like about this movie is as Truman begins to wake up, he begins to see signs and symbols around him. He sees them, a lot of them actually. And we all know how that feels because we get signs and symbols too. You know, we get little signs and symbols maybe every week that are there and we can acknowledge them or not, but they're there. When Truman starts to begin to be curious about these signs and symbols that the world's not real, it's not what it seems to be, then he actually has a moment where the world will come in to try to explain away the experience. And in this case, you always find that the ego is using all the characters to explain away the symbol of awakening. It will say, oh, a light fell from a plane. The debris was coming from a plane that flew overhead. It will try to explain something that comes across on his radio that shows him that it's all being orchestrated and that everyone is just acting and playing a part. It will just try to explain away everything. And that's the way it is with this world. When people have a near-death experience and have this, like my friend Howard, Howard Storm, who had this huge, long near-death experience that involved a hellish experience, that involved light beings, involved Jesus, that involved this giant constellation of light, and then a medical doctor will say, that was just some extra neurons firing in the brain when Howard died. He will take that whole thing and say, oh, there was some loose neurons firing. You see, science, the ego will try to explain away even your mystical experiences. Even when you have a deep meditation, it will try to reduce it to peptides in the brain, which is the brain's just a projection too. It's just the peptides are a projection. The neurotransmitters are a part of a projection. I mean, everything of time and space is a projection. So of course, if you try to use time and space to prove that time and space are real, what do you want? If that's what you want, you'll find evidence. And yet Jesus says in the Course, no amount of evidence will convince you of what you do not want. That's that one line from the Course. Imagine if you applied that to the pandemic, no amount of evidence will convince you of what you do not want. What if you applied it to vaccines? No amount of evidence will convince you of what you do not want. What if you applied it to interpersonal relationships? No amount of evidence will convince you of what you do not want. That's why we're here right now. We're here saying we want God. And we know God is the answer. And we know there is no other answer but God. In the very end, it wouldn't matter what happened to your body, even if it looked bad for your body. It looked like you were dying. You were, your body was dying according to the ego's version. Jesus says you could simply rise up from your death bed and say, I have no need of this at all. In an instant, in a concentration camp, in the middle of a nuclear war, in the middle of anything you can conceive of the worst conceivable conditions and situations, Jesus says in the Manual for Teachers, you could simply rise up and say, I have no need for this at all. Meaning I have no need for the ego at all. And then you get lifted into the glory. In one instant, in one instant, all it takes is one instant of complete devotion to God and that's it for the hallucination. Your Truman Show is over. The instant you want it over, it's over. And then all those other ideas that seem to be there are gone because there's no space for them. They can't even seem to exist in the light of love. Love is the answer. The Beatles knew it. All you need is love. It's been coming to us. The songs have been singing at us for all these years and the movies and the fairy tales are all saying the same thing. It's all about the love. That could be your slogan. It's all about the love, baby. Just if anybody says, what's it all about? It's all about the love, baby. It's not about anything else. It's only been about the love. So I hope you enjoy this movie today because when I first saw this movie, when it came out in 1998, I went to the theater and I had a really good feeling. I was like, I was just walking into the parking lot and into the theater and I felt this swirl of love in my heart. And then when I watched this movie, when I came out of the theater, I didn't want to leave the theater. I just actually just wanted to stay in the lobby and look into the eyes of every single person in that lobby when they came out of the movies, when they were at the concession stand, everybody. I just stayed for about 25 minutes or so in the movie theater because I was transported. I could only feel love for everyone and everything. And then finally I left the movie theater and I went to visit my grandmother, Lillian, because she was always so dear and close to me and we always had these beautiful talks of how could there be a God that would send anyone to hell and how could there be a hell? And we would have these deep mystical talks. But I went over to her apartment and she was just there as usual alone in her apartment and I knocked on the door and I came in and I think I was dancing around her apartment like Fred is there. I mean, all I needed was, I was just dancing. I probably even danced on her coffee table. I mean, I was so euphoric that even my grandmother, she finally had to say, Dave, are you all right? Cause she had never seen me that happy, never seen me that happy. And I said, I'm wonderful, I'm wonderful, I'm in love. You know, I was sharing all kinds of things with her and she just said, well, just don't get fanatic. And I had to laugh at that too, cause it was, I was, I was beyond fanatic. I was gone, gone. I was swept away in God's love. So that's my prayer for all of you today is to watch this movie and to really take it into your heart that you are not at the mercy of this world. That this world is very much like a TV show and you are not trapped in the TV show because the exit is always there if you desire the exit. And that exit is just forgiveness. That's why we're doing these movies is just to enter into that exit. And in the end, we all have to take a bow like Truman does, you know, in the end Truman will take a bow and just smile and say, in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night, we all can take that same bow. And then what do we do with all these characters? We can just applaud at the end of a play, bravo. Oh, bravo. I mean, Truman has a wife named Meryl and she really tries the best to act like she's the wife, the wife care, the wife of Truman. And a lot of times she seems like she's doing a commercial cause the whole world is just like this world is run on product placement. It's all run on economics. It's all run on selling products. And that's what this world is about too. It's all based on products, you know, by this, by that, you know, you watch a commercial. Meryl is so funny as a wife because she's pretending to be a wife but she's really a salesman. And so are all the characters. They're all just salesmen. They're all trying to get us to believe in the reality of this world. And they're doing, I just at the end, I'm like bravo. Oh, what a wife job you did. That was a bravo. Oh, and the best friend, good job. And then I can say that to my mother. Oh, what a mother you play. Oh, that was the best acting role, Academy Award. Oscar for you. That's the best mother act I've ever seen. I believed it was real. I always took you to be mommy. You were so good. I didn't realize you were acting. I thought when you were saying those things to me, I was taking them as if it was something about me, my person. But that's bravo, bravo. And that's the way you leave this world is you kind of give the world a standing ovation. Like, wow, you really tricked me for a while there. I took it serious. I thought you were real. You were a real mother, a real father, a real child. I thought you were a real dog. I even thought my cat, ISO, was a real cat. Here, look at Anna, Anna's coming. There it is. It's just, it's a fake. She's got a fake ISO now. We had to do something fun here to remind us that even our cat, our dog, bravo, that was the best pet imitation you had me fooled. You snuggled with me and purred and you kissed me. You really convinced me that you were a real cat. I almost, bravo, that's an Academy Award stuff right there. But we have to be able to do that literally with everything and everyone, and then we can last. Because as long as we think it's real and it's external to our mind, we're sunk. We're not in good shape if we're at the mercy of these characters. And yet we all know we have to get over it. We have to get over this mesmerism. Mary Baker Eddy called this world mesmerism. It is mesmerizing. We have been fooled to think they were real people, but not anymore, and thanks to Truman. So sit back, enjoy the show. And just remember that your life that you've seen in this world is a show too. And one that you can resign from at any instant if it gets too painful. Just pull the escape hatch in your mind called forgiveness whenever, if it gets too intense, just that's enough of that. Let the air out of that one. So enjoy the movie and I will pop in during the movie and join you in the commentary.