 See that the when the mind became invested in form, you know metaphorically in that sense it forgot about the mind you know We we end up going to school and we learn about We learn about history and we learn about bodies and we're in a health class. We learn about anatomy You know and nowadays occasionally you find like a psychology class Occasionally filtering down into you know But it's like the deceived mind has forgotten that it had that it is a mind In psychology, there's there was ill-behaviorism Trends, you know, you can't see it. You can't measure it doesn't exist kind of or Science still you know much basis on empirical evidence in the world It's it's taken it's taking a while to for the mind to start to first of all Be convinced that it is a mind or has a mind and then to figure out In a sense, how does this mind work? And and I mean that in a general sense It doesn't really help to study the ego a lot of psychology kind of goes around in circles when you end up studying the Psychosis or you know a lot of the DSM 3 and lots of the things in psychology It's got all these categories and labels for all these So-called sicknesses and everything and literally the ego Jesus says love studying itself So when I talk about Studying the mind. I'm not talking about that, but it's like learning Laws of mind learning the laws of mind as God created it and learning the twisted ones that the ego have The most fundamental law of mind in the early text Jesus said is what you extend you are That's how the law is in heaven God extended himself and that's how the son was born The son was an idea in the mind of God It's just a sense of creation of expansion of increase and yet it doesn't have any time involved it Okay, how can you have increased without the concept of quantity? but But what the ego does in this world that same law what you extend you are Coming through the egos filter is what you project you will believe And so the world is projected the body is projected and and In a sense, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy now that the mind is held on to these attack thoughts They have to be projected I mean there's no way you can hold on to attack thoughts in the mind because the ego says it's like here's the Holy Spirit And here's the ego and it says Gotta project them and that's what the dynamic of projection is. That's why you know you get angry at people It's I don't want to look at It's a decision. I'm making you know, I don't want to look at anger is my decision I want to be justified in Saying that this person obviously did this. Don't you think you know And I'm not sure so I'm gonna get 67 people agree with me, you know, it really was this person's fault They have a very disagreeable personality You've got a good reason to be you know and you see how insidious this ego works because it's a crisis to get allies Notice the first thing that you always do is always the perceptual judgment, you know about a situation involving this person I mean when you really look at it if the course is telling us Jesus is telling us that your spirit your eternal your changeless your infinite your magnitude you are powerful. I mean, you know This this contradicts the experience in the world is being a weak little frail person battling against big economic Political forces or diseases. There's you know, these are two different ways Obviously and one of them has to be right. You know these to say well, it's true. It's the magnitude but but all of it Lee it comes down to this sense of Personhood that what I've noticed is that the self-concept Involves I'm an important person and You're another you're another you're a real different person than I am It's it's what Krishna Murthy and a lot of the mystics have called the subject object split You see is which of course is too right away instead of just complete unity and oneness that the ego With the optical illusion of the world breaks it up into a subject object split and who is the subject? That's me the person Okay, the personality and who is the object that is any other person or the world you can be the object So we've got subject David and object gene And the subject has his own Yeah And here we go, you know, I mean it's like you know and not only that but we've got different self-concepts and we've got different beliefs So the more time that we spend together in this metaphorical sense of Communicating talking and everything then all of a sudden you believe you believe what you know I mean look at look at marriages I mean, you know you get married and then things like you know Do you open the packages on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, you know? big issues My mom always taught me This was the way and you're saying what you know, it's like I'm drawing the line here You know, it's like and and then you get into this thing of compromise. You know, I mean I always thought compromise was good I grew up, you know compromise is a good thing And of course the saying that that forget compromise that there is a way of looking at the world of tuning into the Holy Spirit Where everyone gains There's in compromise. It's like I'll give a little give a little will mediate will work this issue out and form, you know Well, we'll open them on Christmas Eve this year But next year, you know, I'll make a bargain with you But but what the course is saying is there is a way of training our minds and of literally looking at the world We're forget compromise that each decision that we make will be one in which the entire Sonship will benefit This is an extraordinary idea because if we believe that we're this little person We're always gauging our decisions, you know Well, if I do this open my boss think or what my husband or wife think or it's like We end up, you know, the old thing about making lists and putting the pros on one side and the cons on the other The course is giving us a radical new way saying that every decision you make is for the whole sonship You know that you're literally choosing between the ego and the Holy Spirit every instant But you don't see it that way you've got here's the ego and the Holy Spirit in the mind This is the intolerable situation. The mind can't stand that because you know, it's intolerable so it starts stacking on beliefs on top of that beliefs in the world to cover over that This is what's going on in the mind and and basically here comes the miracle impulse from the Holy Spirit Very powerful shooting up through the mime and it's got to come through all you know, like those cookies we had in there You know, it's got to come through all these Rooks and crannies and everything and boom it comes out on the surface and it's like on the surface is I'm a person and I'm deciding to Buy a car I've just decided to buy a Chrysler So here we got our miracle impulse It's come through all these layers and levels of form and now I'm a person buying a car Now do I want the red Chrysler or the green Chrysler? Oh, gosh, it's a tough decision. I can't debate on this. What color should it be? I'm now here. Jesus is kind of saying, you know, you're choosing between two illusions. You're straining Well, you want the green car. You want the red car, you know And what he's basically saying is that as long as you perceive yourself as a person in the world You're you perceive that your choice is in the world that I'm a person in the world and I've got to choose between Circumstances I got to choose where to live or where to work who I'm going to live with, you know, gosh What time it is so I got to go, you know on and on make choices and and all Jesus is saying is that the real choice is Simply between the ego and the Holy Spirit and it's right down here. It's way down here in your mind You've got a question all these silly beliefs that you've got blocking the real choice Jesus says bring the problem back to the solution Bring the problem from perceiving to be a problem between the red car and the green car that you're debating over to It's between the ego and the Holy Spirit So he helps us go through and peel the layers of the onion if you will to go deeper and deeper down to see that Gee, this is the only decision Once you peel all the layers once you go all the way down to the bottom and you see that the problem wasn't out there in the World problem wasn't between the cars the problem wasn't my boyfriend or my girlfriend or it wasn't I lost my job The problem was here it is. It's all unveiled all this I've gone beyond all these beliefs and here's what I'm looking upon now Here's the ego and here's the Holy Spirit This is no choice This is no choice at all. Bing wake up You know, but you see why the going down through the beliefs is so important You know, you got to get down to the to the Holy Spirit into the ego That's why rules for decision. You know, it's kind of like how do you feel? You know? Just think of yourself when you wake up in the morning. I want to have a happy day I want I want happiness and peace more than anything else And if you hold on to that idea, you know, you really hold on to that You just tenaciously hold on to I want peace of God more than anything else That's the day that'll be given you. You will have a perfectly happy peaceful day but when Alternatives start to enter your mind, you know, it's like well, I'm having a peaceful day, but I I've got to be at this important. This is being in this trains in front of me. I'm gonna lose my job Here we go again, you know I'm back into the beliefs again And that it just doesn't cut the mustard, you know, it's like well the pieces of God stuff was good for a while But this is big. This is the real I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me, you know kind of I'm orchestra. I'm I'm reading meaning into this train. It's gonna hold me up. I'm gonna be late I'm gonna lose my job. There goes all the the fear thoughts So I mean what a tool that we have to help cut through all these beliefs or help dissolve all these beliefs Time is down there at the bottom, too I mean, you know, sometimes it's frustrating for people when they read in the course that that all it takes is one is, you know You gotta be kidding me one instant, you know, I could really in just one instant choose to accept my perfection You know as God created me, it's like yeah, but when you believe in time You know time and space and matter and in the world and everything the world's built on That's where it seems to take time to work things out And it really wouldn't be it would be a very short little book If it just if you opened up this big book and it just had two words that God is Like oh What I mean, that's that's pretty much a fact But I need help where I believe I am so Jesus wrote the Course in Miracles With all these layers and different levels so that whatever you believe you are you can kind of grab on to something It's like a stepping stone Then you say yeah, this idea resonates with me I'll put my foot on that and I'll anchor on that for a while and then you You stay there for a while, and it's kind of nice, but you start to feel like the other something more and then something else Jumps out at you. You've read the same paragraph maybe for two years, and all of a sudden boom Yeah Another one you get to step on another step, and then the other one now. I don't need that one below now. It's fine You know others may seem to need it, but but I don't need it And it's like a ladder, you know that he's kind of given us in the Course in Miracles a ladder Kind of how do we get out of here? We climb Metaphysically it never happened metaphysically. It's just a bad dream. That's not where my experience is, you know, I've got Give me a run down here that I could stand on you know So we do that and they just go deeper and deeper and deeper and ultimately the higher rungs are the subject object split That that as soon as I start to give up my investments in personhood, you know What are my investments in personhood if I believe I'm a man and I go into the discussion and a group of women start saying oh men Men this men that you know here. They come the defense is like, you know You're talking about me because you see the me is identified as being a man. It's not you, it's just your testosterone. It's just the testosterone or the hormones or whatever you know When you start to look at the self-contest stuff. It's this construct that we've made up and Whatever it is that we're valuing whatever it is will defend. I'm an American, you know Forget Saddam and da da da. We're still into that subject object split. We're still identifying with an illusion Of ourself. It's always tied into form And the course is nothing different than just starting to say I mean it was great when I could watch a reds game finally, you know and Sit down and try to watch the divine perfection when the reds were playing the Dodgers Or or Wimbledon. I was I was really into tennis, you know years ago. I would watch Wimbledon and I would root so hard for Jimmy Connors that I would sweat For like five hours against Bjorn Borg I would I would probably lose more liquid than Jimmy Connors lost because I was pulling for him so hard on each point Oh, it hit the tape it fell back on his side, you know It's it's it's the same whole thing, you know, it was like a real investment My identity was tied up in how Jimmy's Connors career went, you know, or Pete Rose or or so for it And you can start to see how your emotions hinge On the external outcome, you know Connors pulls it out in the fifth set. Yes, I'm going to be happy for a week But then the next match You know, it's like it's on and on and on It's like from insanity to sanity, you know, it's like that just that second that one instant I guess even in making a decision between the whole spirit of ego it all is bright