 Take responsibility for the mind and for all perceptions and so The first thing is just to just admit that pain is a perception It's a misperception actually we could say it's a it's always a misperception and then What you were talking about in your group sounds like that was right on the right track in the sense of letting yourself really Really face what you're feeling and there's so many ways it seems in this world to kind of disguise distract away To try to dissipate deny repress whatever there's a lot of tricks But as opposed to just facing it, you know and some teachers have called it, you know like Going into the pain. I would say more is like you're going into your mind This whole world and this whole cosmos was made to keep you mindless you know, it's like a big trick to forget the mind entirely and The trick you might say it seemed to be successful even when When there's always talk about the brain, you know, the brain is just another aspect of the dream world but to talk about the brain and neurotransmitters and hypothalamus and Break it apart and diagnose it and say what parts, you know Control what parts and what parts when you touch an electrode to what parts what happens in the body and this and that It's part of a whole system That's really designed to keep you mindless Keep you unaware of the mind to kind of keep you feeling like you're out of your mind like you've lost your mind and and Make it be normal to have lost your mind I'm out of my mind. Where did it go? I don't even know Well, what's going on now? Well, I've got a brain. Oh brain. Okay. I got a brain. I got a brain. I got a body. I Got a world, you know The amnesia is so complete the mind the divine mind has been so pushed out of awareness now that It's not even a topic of conversation You know, how many people do you see, you know go out and just have chit chat about the divine mind What do you think about the divine mind? You know, it's just not even Dialogue anymore. It's it's amnesia. It's gone. It's pushed out of awareness Crazy Yeah And they treat your brain they lock you up give you drugs and treat your brain So it's a pretty tight kind of illusion like a closed system to be mindless, you know, and And it's all just terminology, but I remember when I was in Sweden I was The West Coast of Sweden and they said you should come here David. They they have a festival It's a non duality festival that they have and people come from all over the world Byron Katie and Eckhart and all these different people and they have it East Coast of Sweden, I said, well, what's the name of the conference? They said no mind That was the name of the conference Wow, no mind conference It's kind of funny coming my spiritual journey was through the course where Jesus kind of flips it around and and he says you are mind Holy mind and purely mind you know and He basically says, you know, it's kind of a choice you can either accept that you're all mind or You can make up a concept And that concept can involve a body and a world and time and space and everything else But he was just speaking of the divine mind In fact, he does say in the course that the mind is the activating agent of spirit an interesting phrase from Jesus The activating agent of spirit in other words his spirit is just what reality is You reach it through your mind the way that he's talking about mind but his his mind is Is is coming into abstract mind Not mind in a sense of private mind Even his metaphor of right mind wrong mind people say that is extremely dualistic I'm not I'm a non-dualist and and Jesus has got all this right mind wrong mind stuff and Jesus is basically saying no You believe in two and then you project a world out and you see the two out in the world To convince yourself that you don't believe in two You think that you're a whole person Nonsense. There's no such thing as a whole person You you think that you have a mind of your own But you don't he's saying you your mind you live in the mind of God and There's only one mind. You know, that's the mind the divine mind You can't you don't have like a partition of that mind like God's got this big divine mind, and then you've got a corner of it A mini divine mind We don't have a mini divine mind. There are no minis. There's no mini means It's just there's just the capital M me the Christ The son of God the divine so so we're coming from a place now where we've Bought into this trick to become mindless and now we're trying to be mindful. That's like a Zen word Mindfulness is a Zen practice. We're learning to pay attention to the mind and in order to do that you do have to face whatever thoughts come up in the mind and That's where the pain seems to come in. It doesn't so much matter whether it seems to be Experienced in a body or in a body that you call your own or in another body It's just the very perception of it is a misperception. I Think one of the most helpful Parts of the course that helped me Was when I was going through the workbook and Jesus said if God is real There is no pain And if pain is real there is no God Wow that is really let's talk about hitting it straight on Getting the nail on the head. It wasn't gonna try to do a some kind of evasive maneuver If God is real there is no pain if pain is real there is no God and then if you seem to be perceiving pain You've got to take the perception up lift that perception up towards that That state of mind He's talking divine metaphysics there if God is all in all God is all-knowing and all-loving and all-powerful Where does that really leave room for pain? Where does where is there room for pain in all-loving all-knowing and all-powerful there just isn't There isn't room for it The old thing there is no spot where God is not you know that God is is omnipotent God is omniscient God is everywhere everything and then the real question is When you're perceiving pain is you have to start to take it inside and go hmm Maybe I need to get in touch with the ridiculous belief in pain Instead of just accepting it as a reality and and asking the question how do I deal with it is maybe I should Should get at the underpinnings of it Maybe and it's quite a common experience like you're saying when there's a perception of it to say just just let it stop Let it stop even People in this world that seem to go through You know Would be called a depilitating illness and then they seem to go grow weaker and weaker and Seem to suffer and suffer and suffer and then die You will hear people say Well, at least now they're at peace You know, it's a quite a common thing like it's like because of this long ruling Painful experience and then they die and then they it's the RIP rest in peace Like fuck thank God they at least died Put him out of their misery. It's an interesting belief that death would put you out of misery You know if that was actually the case and wouldn't it be a goal for everybody to be dead? I mean if really a piece of pieces the goal, and you can rest in peace by dying That would be the biggest business on earth You could get out of being an attorney and just come doctor death rack it up Just charge high fees You can rest in peace, but it's gonna cost you a million dollars You know, I'll kill you put you out of your misery. It's just bizarre And then Jesus comes along and he says no this this kind of thing that's more like an epithet rest in peace that they put on on Tombstones, and you see the halloween's rip No, that's for the living That was meant for the living Not for the dying. That's for the living rest in peace and how do you live? Eternally except through forgiving illusions If the illusions have blocked eternity from your awareness and they're blocking you from knowing your eternal reality Then of course you'd have to forgive or release the illusions to live You know when Jesus said two thousand years ago, you know, you know That you must become born again He wasn't talking about converting to Christianity, you know from Islam or something It was he was talking about he was talking about a resurrection of the mind the mind Recognizing the divine self that it is the oneness that it is so You know, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven until you were born again He was talking about a rebirth or a re-experience of that spirit Which which is forever our true nature. That's all it was but didn't really have anything to do with with reincarnation or you know Entering a body once or many times. It was just simply a Turning the mind right side up and recognizing that so I think Debbie the best thing to do is is to say okay when I'm proceeding with my partner And what I'm feeling is my opportunity for for healing It's my opportunity to to begin to question the belief