 I just heard the prompt a couple of days ago to come on down, so I live in Munchie. We have a Course in Miracles residential property there. We're pretty much re-devoted 100% till the awakening, and they were just invited to come up and just share a little bit about what we're doing there. As with most things around David, nothing is planned or organised. The property just seemed to appear last year. One of our devoted people in our community suits her family property, and we're actually blessed to be using it for all the purposes. So we have 1,000 acres, we have a beautiful heritage home set, and anybody is welcome at any time to come for devotional stays with us, and just live with us the way that we live. We really live just following the Holy Spirit in every moment, 24-7, watching our minds, devoted to healing our minds, using all of our relationships for that purpose only. And so people can come and stay with us. We have retreats, we have a silent retreat coming up in April. We have a winter retreat in June, and there's information about those on the table there. Yeah, we're just so happy to be back in Australia. Most of us have lived overseas for many years. And we just want to extend our love to everyone and everyone who feels to come and join us in any way. So, yeah, there's some information on the table also about we have a virtual online Gemite group. David's not the latest book, two books ago. There's a round the globe. People are gathering to study the book together and use it to go into their mind and have an expression session. So we had that on a Tuesday night at 7 o'clock and anyone from anywhere can join into that. Sorry, thank you. It's my pleasure just to introduce David. I'm so blessed and excited to be here. I think it's been about five years since you've been here and picked me up all those years ago. A few of us actually, so room for a treat. Thank you. Yes, and Kate's right here too. I was asked, we don't have a flyer yet for the Course in Miracles conference coming up, but that's the first Course in Miracles conference. You want to just come up and share a little bit about, because this is the locals, some of the locals. Yes, okay. That's where we start. We start right with the locals and then we build. Thank you everyone for the Course in Miracles conference. We don't have a flyer just yet, but we've only just decided on pricing and venue. But it is on October the 28th to October the 30th this year, and David's committed to coming out and we've got Gary Renard. And so Gary's going to speak on the Saturday, David's doing the Sunday. So it's a three-day on the Friday. It felt like a big prompt for me last year to try to help sort of get everybody that's starting the Course in Miracles on a spiritual path just together, to come together. And I just asked, you know, how could I be helpful in helping get this sort of coming together? So it's just to ask some spiritual teachers to come out, because of the cost of the year things to go over to the States generally. So we only have to pay one of their things to come out and we can get these beautiful teachers and it helps us go deep and it keeps us really mindful. So this Friday, the prompt really felt to do like a day of some sort of experiences. We're all coming together. So we're getting to know each other. And then the other two days we can obviously have interactions and listen to Course teachers. But it really feels like this real coming together, this joyful, this joining. So that was the prompt and that's sort of like the idea behind it. And it's all just unfolded beautifully. It's all everybody sort of says, yes, they love to come. So now that we've got a few things organised, we've got a venue that's just beautifully appeared, the right price. So the ticket pricing is very reasonable. It feels like we'll now be sort of publicising it a bit more. And so you'll see on the website that when the Facebook comes up it's done a beautiful job and that's all fallen into place. It's just been beautifully flowing. And yes, I'm very honoured to, he didn't expect today and to have been his presence. I picked him up from the airport the other day. So it was just lovely. And yes, the whole idea behind the conference is sort of joining with your brother, coming closer together with support. So how that comes out, it's not up to me, but it feels like that was my prompt to just bring something and then maybe a cheer, you know, bring it in. Because we are quite a distance away. You know, the internet, we're all connected quite deeply, but there's nothing like being in the presence of each other and it seems to bring sort of a bit more of a dynamic to the healing. So anyway, thank you everyone. I really appreciate it. And I'd love to see you there at the conference. So that's October the 29th to the 30th. Thank you. Thanks, Tyler. Thank you, Kate. It's exciting. It's always, we can look with a lot of excuses to come together but that's a beautiful excuse. Yeah. So already there, I saw your Facebook page so people can go right home and start tuning into that right away and then it just keeps going from there to the wheel kinds of flyers. Well, thank you for this warm welcome. It's so good to come here and I just love being with you and I love returning here to Australia. I see so many dear, dear friends here and it's been a while. I think it's been about five years or so since I've been here but it feels just like the same moments where we're still all sharing this beautiful moment together rejoicing in this moment and loving it and I think James wanted to have maybe a little gathering in the living room and he said, yeah, let's have a little gathering from two to four in the living room and then I think a flyer got made and put out and then that's why we're here. So... The living room's not this big. No, it would have been a cozy little fit but it would be impossible with this group. So Tia and James are hosting Sam and I while we're down here in Monument Peninsula and these are some of Tia's paintings around here too. So it's a little deja vu because Tia and I did a similar thing where I was speaking up, I think, this gold coast with Raj and Suze and there was a nice big space and Tia had put her paintings up and I don't know when that was. It was probably in the mid-2005. Okay, so that's amazing that it's come around again and we're just enjoying every moment. It's just precious to be here with you and to come together in this communion spirit that is so far beyond our perception. It's beyond the body. We feel it. We feel the love rising up in us. We feel it in our hearts. We come together with open hands and open arms. We open our hearts. We open our minds to the Spirit and ask the Spirit to come and move in us and through us that we may merge with the Spirit that we truly are, that we were created as. And it's quite an undoing from the ego's perspective. It seems like quite a dismantling and an undoing and it can have some jagged edges because the ego wants to exist even though it's not a creation of Spirit and God and so it can't really exist. You might say it's living on borrowed time. It invented time and it's borrowed. And the Course and Jesus are just saying there's this tiny little speck of a thought in your mind that believes it's possible to be apart from everything apart from God and love and oneness and so Jesus is just kind of nudging and saying it's okay, give it back. You could give it back to eternity. You'll lose nothing in the exchange of this puff of nothingness in exchange for eternity. And yet the entire belief system that's underneath this linear time-space cosmos is a belief that there's something more than nirvana, more than heaven, more than everything. And so with this crazy, tiny mad idea, this crazy belief, it seems like now it's a sacrifice to go back home even though that could be, we could say there's nothing that could be further from the truth. It can't really be a sacrifice to be who you always are and always have been. But from the experience of letting go and that's what we're going through in this Earth experience it seems like there's a sacrifice demanded of us or asked of us. And it's a strange position when you think of it to be afraid of love, to be afraid of divine love. It doesn't even make sense, you know, to the mind that seems to be a human being. It's like, no, I want love. I'm not afraid of it. But psychologically there's such a fear of letting go of the familiar and the comfort of time and space and going into what seems to be the great unknown. So a lot of you know that these gatherings, I do, they're just very practical, very simple, very simple joinings of coming together and really just allowing whatever comes to the surface to come to the surface. I've always been big on practicalities and practical experience. I think that the Holy Spirit and Jesus have this monumental convincing job but we've all shown up with our hands up in the air saying, count me in. I'm coming. I'm going through a conversion. I'm going through a transition. But here I come. And we know that there's a lot of strength and love and support behind this call that we've all been called by God and we're answering the call. And in A Course in Miracles, welcome, come on in. You still have some seats here. In A Course in Miracles, Jesus says, all are called but few choose to listen. So we're all saying, few? Okay, it doesn't matter. It's important for me to answer the call. It's very, very important and so we have come into this presence to say yes, we're going to say yes to God. So one of the things that I've just been looking at too is this idea that it can't really be difficult. It can only be that the resistance has to come up into awareness. We have to not hide the resistance. So it's okay to talk about the resistance. It's okay to let everyone know, well, this is what we're doing and there is still some fear and doubt that's down there but we're going to face that. We're going to face it head on. We're not going to try to push it down, push it out of awareness when they're going to try to hide from it. And when we do that, we basically allow ourselves to go through a healing process, healing in the mind, not just trying to heal the body or heal circumstances and situations. So it's beautiful that we're all here and I just feel so connected with all of you. I feel some of you I've seen on the internet and felt you and now I get to be with you, so to speak, in person and we can just go into this experience together. So I just want to open it up with everyone like we do and all these gatherings just to see if there's anything, any topics or themes or areas where you've been practicing. One of the recent lessons that I popped into was lesson 133 in the workbook where Jesus says it is important to bring the student away from lofty, high ideals into practical experiences and practicality and he heads off the lesson with that and then he goes into talking about the conditions of starting to discern the valuable from the valueless and basically his conditions. His first condition is it will not last forever. It has no value whatsoever. That's his first criteria and then if you choose to take something away from someone you will have nothing left. So to me, that's a pretty strong teaching and yet when we start to apply it in our lives we start to be honest with ourselves and say is there anything that I'm still invested in in the temporal? Anything that if God came knocking and calling today that I could just say Lord can I have a little moment of your time there to help me with something that I'm still thinking about in my mind and still passing through in my awareness that I want to take a close look at with you and really that's what we do when we come together we have the support of the spirit through each other through our mighty companions or as we say down here in Australia the mighty mates very strong mighty mates it's our version of the course down here are you doing okay? Yes with my mighty mates I cannot fail so let me just open it up after that greeting and say I love you all and I'm really open to any kind of topics or questions that you'd like to explore today something that's going on in your life maybe that you'd like to talk about have a little bit of clarity on as we go deeper Yes what would be your reaction to the issue of dealing with exploitation abuse criminality as a miracle student? Well that is a key point with the course of miracles because whether we talk about abuse exploitation or just plain being unfairly treated whether it's in a personal sense or it's something that we're watching on the news or something that we're even aware of you know through a book or maybe even throughout history all of time and space seems to be filled with many many opportunities to choose again when we see the idea of exploitation so for me exploitation basically rests on the belief that someone or something or some external force can do something to yourself or to your brothers and sisters as you perceive them that is against their will and we could say that if the will is to be happy the will is to be peaceful, joyful to live a loving life that anything that seems to be a force or an action or an event that is done involving manipulation or control or deceit everything that goes into exploitation has to be looked at very deeply so in my own work with the course of miracles I had a lot of different opportunities traveling and going on the road and somebody was recently reminding me of an experience I had back I would say it was my second year out on the road working with the miracles book and basically going for a walk along the beach and coming back and the car was gone the car was missing and no sign of it and so I do remember a group of lessons that came to me immediately from the course because when you start to study this you pray a lot and you receive these lessons to practice with everyday examples and one of the things that I got was nothing you need will be denied you and another lesson was that all things work together for good there are no exceptions to it so for me my work with the course of miracles has convinced me that exploitation is a misperception and it means that no matter what the evidence seems to be informed and there's lots of evidence we might say it's like the acronym for fear false evidence appearing real there's lots of evidence but we always have a choice of our interpretation and the ego belief system is the belief system in victimization in the belief that you can be acted upon and harmed from forces that are external to your own mind your own consciousness and this belief system is teaching us that if you seem to be exploited or you seem to be hurt or injured in some way the secret of salvation is but this you are doing this to yourself not as a person, not at the level of a person doing it to themselves but at the level of consciousness or mind and therefore I have to get back into my awareness of that consciousness I have to get in touch with my mind I have to get in touch with my thoughts and my beliefs because until I get in touch with those thoughts and beliefs the evidence will continue to roll on like a movie and there will be lots of perceived exploitation in that movie as long as my consciousness is still holding onto this belief in victimization I would say the most fundamental split in terms of consciousness is the idea that there can be a subject and an object or an observer and observed that there have been many many great teachers throughout the ages I call them teachers of truth or non-dual teachers and the Course in Miracles is a non-dual system for healing your mind and waking up to spirit Has anybody ever heard of Sailor Bob? There we go There's a non-dual teacher and it's teaching the same ideas except it's coming from a different terminology that of Course in Miracles but the same teachings and so for me the practice has been whenever I feel that I've been unfairly treated or I perceive that something has been done to me against my will that's my forgiveness opportunity and there have been lots of them but my experience has been as I've gone through this experience that that has been a thought system that has been rinsed rinsed rinsed in my mind to the point where I can see that whatever I am feeling and whatever I am perceiving is a decision in my mind and it's not happening to me that everything that's happening is happening for me and for me to choose again to choose a higher perspective What did you do in the kind of situation that relates to that? Well, when the car was gone actually before the car was gone my friend who was driving and we were traveling in her car she had said something maybe about an hour before that just saying something my car and I said well, it's actually the Holy Spirit's car Jesus can use this car any way that he wants to which is good because it was a little foreshadowing coming in there so that when the car was gone and we had just got back from a walk on the beach her pants were still a little wet from the ocean waves coming up and we were walking in kind of wet clothes and walking back to the car and when the car was gone her eyes were very big her mouth dropped open and I remember these things coming from the course just almost like reassuring her that well, we're on an adventure together we're on a voyage we're on a journey together and this is going to be very interesting that's what I'm saying this is going to be very interesting so at that point we started walking because there was no car in the parking space and we walked away and we got picked up by the park rangers who said hop in the back of the truck we got taken there we did the same things people would do when their car was taken because it had all of our luggage and it had all of our money wallets, purses, everything all we had was watches and some clothes on our back that we were wearing and everything else was in the car for say about a six week journey so even our Course in Miracles books were gone but the boys had said nothing you need will be denied you so we take it to the ranger station we make some calls I can see you would normally do like if you have credit cards and your wallet's stolen you just call the report that we didn't really have a place to say that we were going to stay with and we did have their phone number still in our pocket so we called them and basically while we were there people around us were like reflecting some of the thoughts that were still in our awareness like oh that's terrible you mean you just came down here and it's your first trip to Miami, Florida and you've lost your car and everything that's terrible there was people around us that were reflecting fear but I think underneath it for me there was an underlying sense of trust like I'm not here to interpret what's happening I'm here to trust that it's all from the healing of my mind so we continued on and basically after we made a number of calls the people that we were going to stay with who we had not met yet came and they picked us up so we had a nice hug and we said thank you well this isn't turning out quite the way we thought we were going to stop for a little walk on the beach calling you but here we are on the way home the man was involved with the 12 step program alcohol was synonymous and so he said would you mind if we stopped by this meeting hall for 12 steps on the way home we said we're happy to have a ride in a place to go sleep so we stopped and we met the people lots of hugs again new friends which is really what the journey is about to meet friends and see the love that's in your heart with everyone you meet and they had a big box in the back that was kind of donations of people a clothing drive going on this was Miami, Florida so we went in there and they said here go you guys need clothes so that's what maybe this clothing drives for so we went through the box and I was getting very nice shirts and bells, pants, finding things that fit me so was my friend Beverly and so on and so forth and by the end we had little bags that they gave us little brown bags we put the clothes in and Beverly had watched me try on the clothes and she said I think the Holy Spirit dresses you better than you dress you you just had like a major upgrade in your wardrobe without knowing it and this is the kind of thing I'm talking about when we talk about miracles if you are willing to hold on to the perspective that everything is happening for you not to you, but for you then you start to relax and first we had the clothes come then we were taken there we went to a course meeting the only thing in that car that we had borrowed for the trip was a tent so it really wasn't ours and we were planning to do some camping on that trip so we went to a course meeting but before we went to the course meeting our friends took us to like an outdoor store for camping and so on and so forth they hadn't used tent and it was I don't know how much money it was but I do remember he told us how much a used tent would be we went to the course group at the end of the course group the facilitator said well these people just lost their car and they're brand new in town and everything and we usually pass around a basket just for some donations to help run the meeting but if anybody wants to contribute to them the money that we got was the exact amount what would cost so we knew that that was for to go get the tent and eventually over the course of like a weekend I think by this was all over a weekend so like Friday by Monday morning we did get a call that they had found the car and the car had been stripped apparently in port cities around the United States that's a common thing where people take cars they strip them and they take things from them and so we went there on Monday morning we had to wait till Monday morning we went there the car was there everything pretty much was taken out of the car the steering column, the plastic around it was ripped out so you could you know a little star wars R2-D2 some of these robots it was wires a lot of wires still ran and the only thing that was left in the back seat was two worn out course and miracles books and my friend reminded me that I had said nothing you need will be denied so we had a stripped down car that still drove that needed a little bit of repair not we didn't do cosmetic repairs we left the wires hanging we just got it to run we had our course books and we ended up going up the other side of Florida stopping at unity churches, course and miracles meetings and still continuing on with our trip and sharing the experience that everything had actually been provided to us that we needed to continue on including the course books the worn out course books like the spirit was like saying you are far from finished with your forgiveness lessons you're just started and that was literally in 1992 so that was that was probably 25 24 years ago so it has continued on that was one of the events that happened there were a lot that happened to me over the years but I have to say that calmness that trust on the inside of my heart has stayed there regardless of the people I've met or the situations that seem to come to me there were some situations that I would call emergency situations and Jesus even uses the word that there will be situations that are like emergency situations where you'll need your mind training you'll need your trust like a torch to carry you through those difficult situations they aren't really difficult it's really that the egos interpretation of the situation is very fearful which makes it like a threat but it's just another opportunity to trust and to be carried through and to go deeper and deeper into it so that was one of the early experiences and I have to say that I look back on those early years with the course and those specifically those first five years from 1991 to 1996 those were years always on the road that particular trip I had a tent but a lot of times I had no tent I was either taken in at course groups or taken in different places and so I traveled around for about five years with no house and no travel trailer or oftentimes without even a tent and I was taken in over and over and over in many situations almost a little bit like traveling Trubidor or Gypsy or something but I could see that the reason I went through those experiences while I was working with the course and miracles was to build my trust that I wouldn't be taken care of without the things that I call past learning because this was a very different lifestyle than I had ever tried so those particular five years were like I would say building trust that I could follow and I could learn to follow my intuition and I would be guided and I would be provided for in every seeming circumstance and also I would say those were really important years to transcend this belief in victimization most people would say that having your car taken it could be described as thievery or a stolen car but that's even that's an interpretation that's still coming from the ego there was years later years past and I had a center like a retreat center and it was in rural Kentucky and I would pick up groups of people at the airport and I would take them down there and at the end of the road where I had this little house or retreat center there was an ex-marine who had spray painted on his barn in big letters all thieves must die it's kind of interesting that years later that I had a retreat center and every time I would pick people from the airport it was this rickety old fence and they're all of course American students and then they'd come by and I would try to zip by but every time I'd go by it's on the road they would go and what's the meaning of that all thieves must die and so one time we were driving by and they said what's the spiritual significance of that all thieves must die and I said well it's ex-marine spray painted but what came out of my mouth was in the Bible it says the wages of sin is death and what I interpreted that to mean is you know if you believe in sin you believe in death and if you believe in thievery that something can be stolen actually stolen then you believe in death too it's not part of the spiritual high perspective that all things are working together for good and the spirit will seem to rearrange things all the time you know Jesus even says if you'll be a miracle worker for me I will arrange time and space for you sometimes ego doesn't like the way that arrangement happens if you think you own something and it's gone like that car it's a stretch now there's just plain old robbery that's what that is but in this higher perspective you do have the sense that you're cared for and it's all part of lessons that you're learning and you're learning how to heal and forgive and so from that higher perspective it's quite miraculous it's quite amazing that's just an example the practical example of how I would say when we open up to this Holy Spirit we say please use my life use my dream use my daily situations for healing that it's very practical and that was a good example of what happened when I did the workbook lessons because every day I was doing the workbook lessons I had circumstances and situations that related directly to the lesson as if synchronistically the day was being completely arranged for me to get my lesson and that's a whole different perspective than we're used to as well we're used to thinking the day just goes as the day goes and as if it's the days at random but nothing in this world is at random but thank you for that question because that's definitely a key point that as long as we have this belief that we can be mistreated, victimized unfairly treated in any way that we have definitely some healing to do okay anyone else I was just wondering if you can talk about facing your fears yes I think facing fears is something that it takes a lot of willingness and it takes a lot of courage because this world is like a projection of fear and so for most human beings there are fearful opportunities there's a feeling of fear in the mind with a lot of different things that happen daily and on a weekly basis and for me it's been something that I've had to really give myself over to because I felt like when I opened up for healing I said I'm willing to face whatever darkness is in my mind whatever unconscious darkness is still there it's pushed out of awareness then there's been like releases of fear over and over and over and this was a process that began actually before I started setting a course in miracles I started to have these huge swells of emotions coming up and I had a lot of tears and I faced depression and a lot of human emotions and yet I felt there was something important happening and just allowing myself to feel whatever was arising in awareness and then when I got into a course in miracles it was as if I would get periodic pep talks of saying yes you will have to face darkness and we must go through the darkness to the light so this is not a path I'm just trying to affirm the light it's actually facing the darkness and facing the fears so when I first got into the course and I first was involved I'd say for some time I was just reading the book and praying and meditating and working with the book but then through my relationships I noticed right away with my girlfriend back in the 1980s that there was enormous amount of fear that started to come up with the relationship and it was so strong that I was startled and I was shocked at the intensity of the darkness I just thought wow I am not prepared for that much intensity in fact it got to be so intense that I felt I didn't understand how people could hold down jobs, have relationships how they could go to school how they could function as human beings with the severity of the darkness that was underneath there it just was shocking when it came up into awareness and so there were different ways the spirit helped me with that one of them was going off and doing these little hermitages out in nature I would say a lot of mystics and saints if you read the literature on the saints and the dark night of the souls as you can see they are going through huge intensities but I did give myself time to kind of go away and face it because I thought I don't think I want people around me when this darkness is coming up I am going to be screaming and spitting nails when this is going to happen I am going to face whatever this is and the depth of it and those hermitages were very helpful I also noticed over the years that Jesus guided me to kind of out of the way places where there just were not a lot of people around and even this monastery this Course in Miracles monastery that we have formed in Utah you are basically you are just surrounded by a lot of rocks and rocks are really good mighty mates when you have rage coming up the rocks can handle the rage you can rage and rage and rage at these rocks the rocks are like no big deal no problem no straight jackets no drugs no thoracine or anything pumped into your veins no people grabbing at you the rocks can handle it in fact I have heard you have got a big rock here called air's rock so if anybody is going through the rage get a plane ticket go out to air's rock and let it have it give it all your rage it can handle it and I think that is why a lot of the mystics if you go all the way back to Buddha Jesus went off and prayed on the mount many many mystics have gone out into nature there are many nature mystics because you don't quite draw the same reflections from the trees and the rocks that you do from people around you who would say you are going crazy and you need to be locked up and drugged which is important because we do have to move through the darkness so I would say that that has been a big part of my journey has been allowing the fear to come out and facing it even when there was a temptation to project the cause of it onto a person a situation an event projected onto history there is so much the whole world is like a projection and almost like a dumping ground it is an opportunity for scapegoating and projecting the cause away from your consciousness and away from your mind onto something informed and soon you learn that that is the trick of the ego blaming is how you keep it and forgiving and releasing is how you are free of it and everyone has to face that rage it is just great that I feel like that we have a plan now that involves so many helpers that when you are going through this intense rage there are those that can hold the space for you that can be there for you that can love you through it that cannot judge you while you are going through it and it is very different from my journey which was many years of like solitary kind of trying to do it on my own I will face this all on my own and it was tough I think it was tough and it was longer and if I had been open to the experience of the mighty mates I think it would have gone much faster because when you have witnesses that won't join you in the rage but have great allowance and love and respect and maybe have gone through it themselves so they are like been there I know you need me here I am here for you no matter what and you have full permission to go through and spit it out cough it up and spit it out that is beautiful so I would encourage that that is really why we are here for each other we are here to provide that spaciousness that love, that acceptance for this darkness to move through and it has been buried and hidden for millennium so we do have to take it easy on ourselves we can't we should not be quick to conclude something about the darkness in us we should be very patient and willing to let it move through and let the love that is even deeper than the darkness come and shine through yes here for help and I was guided to pick up the course since I have done that I feel more at peace with what is going on for them but I still wonder if there is more I could do or not do one has anxiety, depression autism and doesn't leave the house and is anxious the other one has other problems where he doesn't believe in himself and is meeting the wrong people and doing things that are not good for him I have let go and put him in the hands of the Holy Spirit and I am a lot more peaceful about it but it is hard to still watch what they are doing to themselves and not wanting to change them is there any advice you can give for me on that or do I just watch them and let go probably that is the answer I think you are aware that is the direction you are moving in the temptation to fix people change people or correct people is a very deeply ingrained belief and it is almost like underneath that belief that we are supposed to fix them, change them, correct them we may even say we may do it under the guys but I need to help them and often time what is underneath helping them is saving them somehow we are seeing ourselves as some kind of personal savior for these important figures I mean when you look at it in terms of the world you could say out of 7 billion human beings these two particular characters have more of an importance than the other 7 billion because you probably see a lot of things going on in the news and the newspaper and everything and the same kind of things going on but these two are really grabbing your attention and if you follow the root of the discontent or the root of the conflict down you will see you will start to tap down into some duty responsibility beliefs so of course the miracles is a teaching saying your sole responsibility your only responsibility is to accept the correction in your mind for this error called ego there is this crazy belief in separation from God and your responsibility is to accept the correction period and the ego is like saying well that's not going to work here because you have some important other responsibilities but actually when we come down to it our peace of mind is not a small matter and it's really for the whole universe so you are doing this cleanse this purification for the whole universe in the end there is only one of us and this belief that we are separate people separate identities separate minds separate thoughts it's all part of a vast construct to keep us guilty and when there is conflict there is guilt still guilt in the mind so it's not like you try to be some kind of a stoic okay I'm just not going to do anything for anyone it's more that you become prayerful you get your motivations and when you start to feel that love and that compassion welling up in you and you get guidance to offer something say something extend something it comes from that place of peace and from strength it doesn't come from worry or concern or fear doubt conflict it comes from that peace and that is the direction sometimes there's programs in the world they call it tough love and all they mean by tough love is stay aligned with what's real and true and even if the reactions can sometimes be very sharp to that because you're literally pulling your mind away from you know people pleasing and caretaking and codependency and all these ego dynamics you're staying true to that but you really have to just honestly watch your feelings and just see that when you do act or you do say anything if you're guided to do that it's coming from that place of peace and it's a very direct pathway to God when you have in a situation where you have been caring for and helping as best you can and you just want the peace of mind now and you're asked to stay true to that stay true to your feelings stay true to that peace and be carried through it so you're on the right track I feel it because I'm still feeling new at studying of course but I do feel a whole difference since I've been studying it and practicing it not just with my sons but in my life it's wonderful yeah, that's it the blessing is in practicing it you are convinced through the practice yeah thank you I started course Americans this year and I've had a very long spiritual practice and lots of things but I moved to do it and it's very synchronistic of course most of us can say that how it falls into your life but it's funny you told a story about a car because when I started it all these things have started happening to me so for instance I was driving in my car with my son up the call to freeway people would know in the left hand lane a car at 120 kilometers per hour on the left hand side of our car in the left lane so I don't even know how that was possible like I don't know if you through I didn't see it coming and the car started spinning out of control and something came alive in me and I pulled the car up and the person pissed off and I had no money really hardly any money which meant that we didn't have a car for this long period of time we lived in a country it was really inconvenient actually but I kept going I believe the universe is friendly I believe this is for us and like you said people around me were saying what a bastard how could he do that to you and I felt that alive through that sense of righteousness and I was shocked that somebody could do that that they couldn't actually do that but on a cosmic level I had to keep going well it happened that's reality that's what happened and he did what he believed was right for him because maybe he was on drugs or drinking I finally got a new car and then the new car completely clapped out and I paid all this money and I found myself in the most enormous amount of debt and I said this year for me was the year that I would clear my debt and in fact I've created more debt and I am in a huge amount of debt and I've made very bad choices that weren't actually serving me or they were serving something however here I am with this you know, waking amount of debt and I work as a holistic coach and I'm running a program helping other people to study course and miracles and but I'm sorry I have really no money and last year I stopped work and I really lived in trust and we didn't have any money and we had all this debt but we kept kind of living and there was enough money just sometimes to put food on the table but things fell off the wagon of course so bank debt got bigger but I guess for me I don't really know what this person about being because in every other way my life is so abundant and I feel so full of gratitude and I love the people in my life and I just love life so much and I have these experiences where there's so much synchronised with you and there's this kind of just incredible blessing really incredible blessing this one area I work with it from a different perspective you know I do the work on it I know money is empty it's just a piece of paper or a plastic it's what I make it mean I can know that but I'm still got creditors ringing up for bank saying you haven't paid your mortgage this month and there's no work and I'm trusting going I'm going to run workshops and if you really bought it what I do there's something going on and you know I'm doing the course daily through the work or kind of finding it's so deeply profound I feel like it's such an incredible teacher but I don't know what to do with these I'm glad you're bringing it up because there's this unconscious sense of guilt and fear or the sense of lack because debt and lack are very related we can see that it's like deep like a vein of darkness it's in tying in with the debt and the lack there's a sense of unworthiness relating towards love and it's somewhere in your heart like I want to be free of this I want to heal of this that's what life coaching is about I want to come back to be fully alive vibrant, happy feeling of ease, feeling of abundance not feeling of scarcity or lack whatsoever and in doing this work for over 25 years I encountered it in myself and got into A Course in Miracles I had student loans which was form of debt as well and that was something that was right in front of me right in my face and when you start A Course in Miracles I've heard so many stories very similar to what you're saying where you feel it it drops into your life through various circumstances and you've made a promise or a contract or you've offered and said okay, it's time to heal I'm going to go through whatever I need to go through for this healing it seems from the ego's perspective to be very extreme because it's like this thing like a very dark cloud it's like hanging over you where many aspects of your life you can just feel the gratitude and there's this black cloud that's like hanging over there and it's actually gotten worse this year like last year I earned no money but I did the work of Byron Cady a lot a lot a lot and I just was at peace with having because I could see I had everything I needed and I didn't be her teach too in nature and I came back feeling completely seeing I have everything I need but something has suddenly switched in over and you're right it is like a dark cloud well in the past when people have gone off on we'll say hermitages or the 40 days in the wilderness that Jesus went through or people going off to convents and monasteries and going through pretty much of emotional stripping away of their sense of self as it relates to this world and with you and with your child and the way things are happening instead of going off to vipassana treats that you've done instead of what to say like a four or five year vipassana that you're you know maybe you've even got a faster track to God your heart is calling out I'm coming okay we'll do the mom the children the death thing so it's like because it's intense having gone through vipassana you can you know that intensity that just the intensity of what seems to be your daily life it's part of a celestial speed up I've been blessed to have gone through it and met so many people who sometimes who had accumulated deaths in kind of strange ways that it kind of came in and it was quick it was rapid and it was going against what they were conscious of because consciously they were going to have this be a year of freeing themselves and all of a sudden now they're facing like a mountain where they thought they just had a little hill to climb it's like a mountain but the beautiful thing I think of this path is support is there are so many things I know in time too where you were feeling guided even with community with children it was like a burning calling that came in and I think that's in one sense we are opening into this instead of like going stoically and trying to handle this all on our own we are letting it come up come out we're being more transparent than ever we're being more opening and more welcoming really to God and the universe saying okay this is a steep path and I call for this and I ask for this but I want to be open to all the help that can come my way because to me that's the biggest prayer of the heart is being open to the symbols of help so that we have this feeling that we're not alone it's interesting I was staying with Mirabella and Maddie and Maddie and Sam were talking at the kitchen table about the suicides the high rate of suicides for young men in Australia how high the rate is and suicide is a topic in an area where you can see that sense of being overwhelmed overloaded confused depressed maybe extremely depressed I would say suicide is a symbol of losing hope losing hope of paying the bills losing hope of being able to make it through the next day losing hope you can feel that intensity that's coming up from the circumstances and it's really it's coming up in the mind it's coming up in consciousness even though it seems to involve these circumstances they're more the projection of it and so it's like you might say in this lifetime so to speak you have just come to a firm declaration in your mind which is basically saying enough is enough I'm not going to run from this for I'm not going to try to fix the form I'm going to face the darkness in consciousness and you're doing it like a lot of people is the backdrop of a mother with a child too not off white knuckling it in some cave in the middle east but it's just looking very contemporary contemporaries in the modern day world to see this but I think this the call I'm hearing is this is the call to join and I know in my lifetime I've just witnessed so many miracles where there's been these collaborations of I don't need to do this on my own I have brothers and sisters that are with me they they want to join they see the value of joining in that in situations where there's been deaths or there's been some extremely physical conditions and what seems to be symptoms and so on and so forth there's an amazing miracles that are coming from the joining of putting it out there and saying I want to join I want to connect I am open to help and that's really what I hear is in your question that and that would be the alderman of life coaching as well to live that way very much like when I come to Australia I always think of the aboriginals when I'm down here and the connectivity they had in their tribe you know like Hillary Clinton one time said it takes a village to raise a child there's a wisdom in that openness of saying I'm open to help I'm open to collaborate I want to see the lessons every day and every moment and I don't want to be weighed down by this heavy cloud because the ego is a death wish that's where the suicides come in it's just when the mind loses all hope of a solution then the ego feels like it's one you know but death is not a release so Jesus says the ego will pursue you beyond the grave that's why we have to heal this we're not going to get any relief through death in any way but thank you thank you for sharing that and thank you for coming I went to talk last night I live in Casemaine and then I drove here and I had to drive home to Casemaine so I've driven about 700 kilometers to see you for us to join and be lifted up together you're a yes I'm very touched you have great determination that's what's very important yes what's your name she lives in Casemaine here we go now we're singing in action we know how it feels when you join like that it's almost like hey I hear you I'm with you that's why support groups have been so helpful to us all because we do need support and it goes the other way of trying to hold it on and hold on to the pride of doing it yourself kind of digging yourself out no no you don't have to think like that anymore that's beautiful you can connect after the program here I would say that my experience of intimacy is when you start to equate intimacy with transparency you are on the way to depths of intimacy beyond anything that you've ever experienced there's an ease that comes in with transparency where you're taking a leap of faith and trust in saying I can let whatever needs to move through move through and I'm trusting that I won't hold it against myself and the sisters won't hold it against me and the universe is not going to hold it against me that it's the bottling up and it's the hiding and protecting of thoughts and beliefs that blocks the intimacy so it's the transparency it's the authenticity it's the mind training of course the miracles that takes you you go through these workbook lessons and all of a sudden you hit this repeat lesson that holds only what I think with God wow to come to a state of mind where you start to open up to actually feel the love of my mind holds only what I think with God everything that takes you in that direction will take you into this this soaring sense of intimacy and it is a washing away of old ideas of intimacy because it's those old ideas and thoughts and beliefs from awareness so there's a lot of focus placed on the body and the ego system there's also a lot of focus placed on even words it's not so much the words that we speak to communicate but it's where are we coming from like Jesus has a whole workbook lesson where he talks about a telephone and he says in this world a telephone is for reaching someone who's not in your proximity he says a real question you should ask yourself is what do I want to reach him for in other words he's even going beyond the use of devices and words saying what's the purpose underneath and we need to be really honest with ourselves in that where am I really coming from here if I'm feeling upset or conflicted and I'm using words to reinforce that or even try to dig myself out of something with the words it's usually is very complicated and there's not a good feeling with it after the words are shared but if I'm just coming to that place of transparency where I can just openly share that's why I've supported those guidelines no private thoughts and no people pleasing just as moving in the direction of openness of having a complete open mind so we have to practice also with where the mind's at we've been talking recently about Skype and Skype calls and how that can seem to be a digital way of connecting and communicating it can be different than being their face to face and we were even sharing at the beginning of this gathering it's like with many of you I've communicated with in various ways whether it's through mind and thought or through different words and things but there's something beautiful about being together in presence together as we go deeper into this sense of true intimacy I think it does seem more and more just like a state of mind and a real connected state of mind and less and less dependent on any kind of form but we do have to be very practical we can't try to jump from A to Z we have to just say show me the way I read a post from Kate if you just put it out maybe today or yesterday but it was all about following the guidance you had basically the way you live which was starting off with following the guidance how I feel and following the guidance is right at the top and then letting go of all the other constructs I think it was in relationship to spiritual teachers and so on and so forth which really are just more concepts then the whole journey of authentic awakening is emptying your mind of all the concepts just having a still open empty mind where the light can just shine through as you, as who you are and the biggest hold back the biggest block I think to being happy joyful, loving, friendly respectful to being in spirit is this idea of just getting caught in a role or some kind of a concept and thinking even spiritual concepts you start to think most of my spiritual concepts have to go in fact I'd say there's only one left for us called forgiveness that's the concept that's helpful and that's an all inclusive concept where there's no judgment of anything whatsoever but everything else is part of our letting go so to me that's where the true intimacy comes in when you can just let go and I do not know what anything is for state of mind that's the most precious state of mind we can live in I would say clueless, carefree and cared for yes well child abuse would fit in when we talk about what you perceive in the world comes from what you believe so everything that we perceive in the world that we see is horrific and child abuse would be part of it would be coming from and generating from a belief system this ego belief system and there's certainly a lot of guilt and shame and terror that's tied up in child abuse recently Holy Spirit and Jesus took me to the movies again and I went to the movie called Spotlight has anybody ever seen Spotlight it's an investigative reporting movie Rachel McAdams is in it and it's like a newspaper the Boston Globe and they have a branch of these maybe five, six people that are part of the spotlight team that do investigative reporting and what the whole movie is and uncovering all of the child abuse that's been going on for decades in the Boston area with the Catholic Church and the priest with the young boys and the pedophiles I mean you know it goes fully the whole movie is just an expose of uncovering this massive systematic child abuse that only seemed to be happening through generations but also it was covered covered and covered and covered with reassigning priests around it was like a massive cover system but as I was watching the movie as I watch any movie I always come back to I can't perceive the abuse unless I believe the abuse I can't perceive the conflict and the split and the fragmentation and all of the horrors of separation unless I believe it in my mind and so I think watching movies and watching the news and anything that's guided as part of your plan that helps get in touch with those feelings the wounded feelings that are involved with abuse is part of the healing of the mind so whether it's child abuse or whether it's Nazi Germany whether it's something that happened decades ago or centuries ago in history or what they're calling with like ISIS nowadays over in the Middle East in Syria and genocide of genocide with refugees and with particularly women and children and so forth on a massive kind of scale for Nazi Germany or whatever it doesn't matter the degree or the size of the perception it's more can I get down to the root of this belief in mistreatment because what we're learning from A Course in Miracles is that innocence and guilt cannot coexist if there's any guilt whatsoever then innocence is gone there's no sense of innocence that we have we have criminal justice systems we have prisons we have penal codes we have all kinds of corrected procedures that all are part of the projection so we have the innocent victims and then we have the criminals the guilty ones we have the abusers and those that are abused we have the victims we have the victimizers and this entire cosmos that's been going on for history all of history is part of this big trick to keep the mind guilty and unaware of divine innocence and what we're really learning from the master from the way shower Jesus is that you cannot hold on to any sense of guilt for yourself or anyone and know the true divine innocence of who you are he's just saying it's absolutely impossible and he's also telling us that your will is to know your divine innocence as I'm speaking to you I see Tia's painting right behind you and it's just like this blazing light rising up above the water with all these swirly colors and the purples and everything and that blazing light it's like this pure innocence that's above and beyond everything that human beings are addicted to are trapped in that we're locked into so I would say it takes a lot of practice but if that is an issue to you that's very important it really gets your attention it weighs on your mind it's heavy then that will be the very kind of issue that the Spirit works with you on the very thing that's heaviest in your mind and it will keep cleansing it and purifying it and lifting your mind and lifting and lifting to reach that transcendent point of going beyond that that same trip where the the car was stolen seemingly or the rearrangement of the car symbol that same trip when I came with my friend Beverly up to Northern California somebody gave us a flyer on the flyer it said course and miracles hit no therapist then I was like when you put course and miracles with whatever after it's always numerologists and the therapist course and miracles tarot reader it always gets my attention what's that and my friend Beverly said I think I'm supposed course and miracles hit no therapist so I dropped her off and she was traveling with me we were having all these daily miracles but she was she was hypnotized by this man and during the hypnosis these repressed child abuse memories for when she was a little girl came into awareness and so after I picked her up she said it was amazing she said I was in this real mystical kind of state and then I got hypnotized and these abuse memories of being abused by my father came into awareness but she said I was so peaceful I could watch them all as they came into awareness it wasn't traumatized by the memories I said well that's why you went to a course and miracles hit no therapist because you were called into the miracle and that's what the miracle does it allows you to see the world to see the memories from a lifted up state of mind and so you were not traumatized by those and she said yeah it felt really healing like I gave myself permission to view again what I was too horrific to even view and I had kept repressed she felt lighter actually from the whole session and that's what the mind training of the course of miracles is doing and it happens sometimes through therapists it happens through many many different ways either past life regressions and all kinds of things that are just tools and symbols that the spirit is using to free our mind from this deep buried and hurt and guilt and yeah watching that movie spotlight was I felt there was a lot of healing that happened because once the story broke and they published the findings of the investigation in the Boston Globe they thought there would be all these church protests that would come but nobody from the church came to protest all they did was they had a hotline with people who felt that they had been abused the phone just kept ringing and ringing and ringing they just took the lid off of a major mind cover-up and gave permission for so many people to call in and say let me tell you what happened to me and I'm so glad I can talk about this because it's been driving me nuts for years nobody seemed to listen nobody seemed to be there to listen to let me speak it and that was the first step I think in a lot of healing and recently we have political elections going on over the United States and we have different candidates and there's this one candidate named Donald Trump and people have been talking to me and saying they have all kinds of reactions and then I saw they asked Deepak Chopra what do you think about Donald Trump and he said oh this is very good this is very good for the healing of the unconscious mind he is acting out so many unconscious thoughts and this is wonderful for healing and the interviewer said well maybe so but I don't want to vote for the guy and I tell you that much and he said nobody must leave that to the collective choice so it was totally we shall see what happens with the collective choice in other words it was such a broad sweeping perspective that he had nothing negative to say he was overjoyed that all the healing that was occurring from this one man acting out all these unconscious beliefs now that's a different perspective than we could say the mainstream perspective is and I say we could extend it even to issues like child abuse or genocide that when we look at what's happening in Syria for example and the refugees flooding out into all the different countries when we look at what happens with you know people being decapitated you know heads chopped off in public squares raping women torturing children and all the different things that seem to go on the only way you can look at it in a meaningful way that helps you heal is to start to say wow this buried unconscious this darkness of believing we could separate from our source we have spent millennium trying to stuff it down and run away from it and now it's getting acted out in what seems to be broader and broader scales some people have been saying to me recently they said the world is getting really wacky just the intensity of what they're watching on the news it just seems to get wackier and wackier and crazier also you know like it seems to be wherever I go instead of just bringing warmth in the sunshine I bring the storms so I came down to Mornington and it was like going to sleep and it was like howling pelting rain howling pounding it's like thank you David you know we had the wacky weather already here but we're talking about pounding rain pelting rain and high winds you know that's kind of the way that it's happened as I've done these gatherings for these years sometimes I bring storms sometimes I remember I would go do this gathering in Georgia and every time I would visit these people they would see me the next day the first day of the retreat and they would smile and they'd go you did it again it's either the plumbing's clogged when you come or the weather goes crazy and I went through it for like five or six years they said every time you show up on time I brought like freezing Arctic from the north down I was in Florida and the pipes were freezing and breaking they go we don't ever have breaking pipes but you come here and this Arctic weather comes down from the north and it's breaking pipes it's just stirring things up in other words let's look at this buried dark guilt and shame and let's heal it forever it's time for us to wake up saying something to her really needs this it's in not in good shape the other day when I was talking to you and you said you said when you started doing the course you felt Jesus talking to you quite clearly I just went away and I felt that you were sort of I felt this sense even though you hadn't said it to me that was coming through for you too because you said I felt this great sense of Jesus asking me to go out and talk to people and I felt that that was sort of it's turning around through you, through everybody all the people that affected by what you say and then we're all having miracles and then all the miracles are happening by each mind waking up and I just sort of felt is that what you felt you know when Jesus was speaking to you and I know it's still the Holy Spirit which is so clear for you do you feel that this is sort of the going out and talking and really making a difference in the world it is a feeling of I know Mary Ann Williamson said one time she said we have to start bringing some of these discussions into the mainstream and not covering over things like really talk about it let's say it's straight and having been raised Christian and gone to Bible school and this and this and this and then to go out and be speaking in public and start sharing ideas that God didn't create this world it's like well any Christian who's read Genesis that's like the basic foundations of Genesis God created the heavens and the earth and the seventh day he rested and then that's coming through or talking about pain I think recently I saw one of the YouTube videos go up you know if God is real there is no pain if pain is real there is no God you know saying that in public you know it's like whoa but actually it's time it's time for us to awaken from this slumber from this dream it's like that movie Inception that the mind has been so asleep that there's layers of sleep so many layers that the mind has forgotten it's sleep and dreaming and it's taken now everything to be actualities instead of just dream symbols so recently I was having lunch with Judy Scott she was the publisher of the course and we were sitting around a table talking and then she was saying over towards me saying he's like a prophet a modern day prophet but when I think of the prophets I think of the Bible Isaiah and Ezekiel and you think of John the Baptist going around the one that baptized Jesus imagine going around Australia repent repent oh oh mate you need some help you know but we're doing we're doing our own version of it when we start to sparkle and shine when we start to bring light and love that's our way now many many centuries later saying turn from the darkness turn toward the light turn toward the joy turn toward the happiness our demonstration is sending like ripples throughout the mind it's a big wake up call and I do feel that and I feel like there was part of the channelings from Helen Shuckman where Jesus said that the earth has not gone through a comprehensive awakening we're the generation you know I tell people I meet I said we're the ones we're being called to bring about a comprehensive exponential awakening not hold on to this belief system that it's just going to be this way and it's too deep and it's too dark and it's too ingrained to make a difference you know we're actually going through a transformation of consciousness where we're like bringing in a big wave we're like bringing in a tsunami of love and light and this is our generation and even you being called to do the Course in Miracles conference down here it's a call to joining and I've met Kate recently she's like I'm on a mission sounds like the blues brothers I'm on a mission for God she didn't say that she said I'm on a mission she wants to meet everyone who's involved in the Course around here on this country and way beyond that you know as far as the mission takes you and it's a very strong calling like it's we're getting activated by Christ not in the sense of sacrifice not in the sense of having to give up something that we really want but in the way of being convinced that the joy love, light is our inheritance and we're taking our hand up and we're saying here I come I'll do whatever it takes yeah it's beautiful oh yeah there's just so many helpful techniques there like Byron Cady's work is excellent EFT different types of breathing techniques that evolve like circular breathing there just are so many techniques that are around that people have been discovering over the years decades and centuries that are helpful looking at what was hidden or buried so you might say what's beneath all those techniques is learning to bring the darkness to the light is learning ways to get in touch with this unconscious darkness and when I look at the history of religion or even at the history of spirituality with a lot of religions there were the do's and the don'ts or you follow these rituals or you believe these things there's all these different theologies we'll say that are permeating all these cultures on earth and often times what was missing in religion was this awareness of the unconscious mind you know it's almost like no matter what you do on the surface to try to get out of it until you get in touch with the darkness until you find ways to let it come up it's almost like you're just rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic you know the ships going to go down every scene over and over for centuries until you can get at that darkness underneath and so I mean there's a number of psychologies and spiritualities now and there's so many great techniques that are out there for getting in touch with what was pushed out of awareness I particularly enjoy music and movies there's different types of worksheets breathing techniques just goes on and on there's different types of theater and acting things out like using drama to get in touch with it I think we could just say they're all experiential and they're all very very helpful and use what works for you something that you're drawn to something you find engaging and even exciting you know is something that would be the most helpful well it's important to remember that all the techniques are still the spirit's use of symbols so when people say can I do this on my own or do I have to do it in a group or whatever it's really all mind anyway and so it's very symbolic when you are able to bring up things that you normally would not bring up and you feel a safety and a security to be able to do that then it's just symbolic that you really are doing that to the Holy Spirit because people will sometimes try to make the distinction what's the difference between turning it over to the spirit versus talking with others or doing these techniques and the even confession in the Catholic Church and these kind of expression sessions are all just symbolic that I don't want to hide anymore I'm not going to stay scared and keep holding it in and stuffing it down I'm not going to do that anymore and so even people who take certain drugs and have a real expansive opening in their mind and the drug that did it is just that they felt safe enough to have that experience using a drug and that gives them a glimpse of something that's beyond the everyday perception that's very helpful as well about the drugs when my son a year and a half ago was in psychosis he said some amazing stuff I had to go oh that sounds reasonable actually amazing some other things he said I was like wow that sounded what up wise but he was rambling but it made sense in a funny way meaning weird and he thought so too even afterwards he read him with some of what he said I know I got to the truth of it and I thought some of it did sound like that wasn't cool it's great that you can just start to see things as witnesses to your mind and not have to label it or judge where it came from because I had that when I was working in vocational rehabilitation one of my first clients they said he was on so many different medications and he was a holy terror and they told me all these things I didn't listen to any of it I just showed up and had a prayer to Jesus before it started and then he was speaking such wisdom for the half an hour of the intake the so-called psychotic and schizophrenic he was speaking such wisdom and everything after 30 minutes I finally said where did you learn all that the Holy Spirit of course and so I was like okay that was when I was working in a voc rehab so you start to just say oh this all witnesses to my mind if I pray and I'm open if I'm not judging then it can come in any direction in any angle through books and movies I have a friend of mine he really doesn't censor his thoughts he really just speaks his thoughts almost like this movie called the invention of lying where they they speak whatever is on their mind and so his fiance is having a lot of difficulty with these thoughts coming up about her but he's not I told her he's good he's got Tourette's for God just enjoy it it's going to be a rapid healing because he's not hiding his thoughts he's not protecting him and often times people there would be in that state judged or diagnosed as psychotic and you can hear amazing stuff coming through you study the course you get that witness it's reminds me of the course where you go through all these chapters with Jesus and then when you're getting into those later chapters he's not holding back with anything it's almost like if you think of there's a make-believe self it's not your real self and then you have a real self which is your Christ self or your purely spiritual light self he starts describing this make-believe self as like a two-tier system and basically if you think of it as like a two-layered cake that your false self has two layers the surface layer is he calls the face of innocence and it's wet with tears at the injustices of the world you know it does a pity party poor me I was do you see how they looked at me and after all that I did for them all that I've done they treat me this way it's got this this is the surface the world icing is and this is the personality self that's all the top tier and then there's the bottom tier and basically Jesus says well you've got two layers of dreaming going on you've got these the dreams that you think or your everyday interactions with the world that's the top tier and then there's the dreams that you dream in secret there's the dreams that you gave away which seems to be your everyday interactions and then there's these dreams that are so dark and so horrific that you dream them in secret it's like you're playing hide and seek with yourself and you've got a two-tier self concept you don't even want to look at what's under the top layer and so he uses three words to describe the lower tier draped with sin draped he says draped with sin dark that the reason you made the personality self the self that you think you are in this world is to cover over another self even when you're going through this world you know like the Paul Simon song you know you believe you're gliding down the highway when in fact you're slip sliding away when you think I'm doing pretty good I've got my act together I finally got my shit together I'm a whole person I'm a whole healed happy person la la la going along I've got it pretty good got money in the bank account got my insurance got a nice house a car good family my relationships never been better I'm doing really good that's all on the surface and then sometimes you go to sleep at night and you have a nightmare bummer I've got my shit together during the day and there's a damn nightmare what do I have to have a nightmare for they're coming out they're coming out that lower tier that is still down there and hasn't been seen beyond it hasn't been healed it's starting to break through and oftentimes many people will do that they'll try to keep their act together on the surface and the nightmares it's just showing there's something that lies beneath there's something unresolved and I think that's part of your question because you're saying like you don't want to keep what's going on the guilt so personal and it really isn't personal it's just projected out into Sophie and the characters the world around Sophie but it's underneath there so you might say that's why A Course in Miracles is a mind training program and he says things in his workbook like you know the reason you must put your care and attention into these earlier workbook lessons is because when we get to the later part of the workbook we're going to attempt a direct approach to God and if you haven't done your homework if you haven't been with me and following along on these early lessons that these later lessons are going to be more traumatic than beatific it would almost be like if you're in university and you've got your final exam and you've really not been paying attention you know you haven't been taking notes and you haven't been studying the notes and so you're going there and you're going into this final exam and you're a little bit shaky because you haven't really prepared for the exam it would be the same with spiritual awakening that's why he's given us a mind training program and he's given us 365 lessons and this is the master psychologist and we have to prepare because our later lessons are going to go straight beyond the words and we're going to go straight into the heart of God and so be ready so to me that's what's so great about the course is that we are given a mind training program and he's basically only given us two instructions you know don't do more than one lesson a day and as best you can try not to make any exceptions to the lesson it's almost like a runway like we don't expect the jetliner to just go straight up in the air it's got to build speed in order for that wind to get underneath those giant metal wings and then for that plane to take off you have to reach a certain speed of velocity that's a great metaphor and it's great to think of yourself as on the runway you're on the runway right now and the plane is moving it may have just started sometimes we feel like we're just barely rumbling and just starting but as we keep practicing and practicing our velocity gets higher and higher and higher and then you know that feeling when the plane lifts up you don't feel those wheels rolling on the whole shaky there initial and up you go and the spirits got you and you just go higher and higher that's what's happening and just all you can do is welcome it like at night time even before you go to sleep at night just to say holy spirit be with me and you know there's some things that are still down there that I need to look at let's do them here in the nighttime dream and then when you wake up in the morning say okay here we go another day let's just see some darkness here bring it on hit me with your best shot come on now if you make that prayer to the holy spirit just be ready fire away Pat Benatar you know you can click into a little Pat Benatar but if you really are confident that you really are going to heal this is for actual healing this isn't for disguising or trying to fool yourself anymore you're going down that runway and you're going to take off there's nothing that's going to stop you yeah bring it on that's the way here we have a new course student in the front row and she's her faces all the time she's like bring it on that's the spirit that's the yes that's it we can't lose we cannot fail it's like we're all arm in arm our arms are locked and we may have reached some stones and some gullies along the way but we're you know when you're walking and you've got your mighty mates locked in arm in arm you're not going to you're not going down you can even have a boulder that knocks your fingers you've got your arms in there mighty mates got you here we go keep going it's good it's good news and she's asking about trust whenever I thought of trust I always thought of faith I think of faith and trust in the same way and I remember talking to Jesus in the early years and just saying it seems to be like a big key seems to be a key to everything is the trust and the faith and I would say I just need more trust I would always say just need more trust more trust more trust and he said well it's not really so much a matter of more or less it's like it's more a question of what are you trusting in than a more or less thing he said your mind is so powerful that we share the same mind and this mind was created by God so it's extremely powerful but where is the trust aimed where is the faith aimed and then he went into saying look at your beliefs and look at your thoughts whatever you believe in you're trusting in whatever you think on a daily basis those are the thoughts that you're trusting in and if you're looking for external solutions things to get better in terms of worldly conditions and so on and so forth then you're trusting in something that seems to be outside of you and he said I want you to trust in me I want you to just keep that faith and trust like I've got you you're in the tractor beam you're being beamed up you're not failed to be beamed up you are in a healing and an ascension process and that's the key thing is to really what are you trusting in seeing alternative means that I'm not trusting well I think when you say turn away from doctors you're really turning away from a thought system that is on seeing causes and consequences in the world or in the body and so you might say that Jesus would say in the Course that when there's too much fear to have a complete healing in mind that occasionally there's a mixture of magic and miracles and he's just saying that's when your mind is too fearful to make the shift completely internally and when the mind is so terrified of that then that's where your trust is in Jesus your trust is in the Holy Spirit and what you're saying is use the symbols use all the symbols of the world to reach me in a way that I can really recognize the solution if I've been addicted to images then okay use the images to help wake me up you've got to reach me somehow reach me in some way so in one sense I have seen people who dealing a lot with doctors and sometimes they would go see a doctor and the doctor would make a diagnosis and they would have to just be with that for a minute to say okay how does this feel for me this diagnosis and so that's sometimes where you can even hear the internal teacher say maybe you should get another opinion a second opinion but it's actually taking you more towards opening towards what feels helpful so a lot of times people are told by doctors you have this long to live, you have these conditions it's all very much based on the body and they open up and even can have some symbols of what's called alternative healing that can come in for example let's use our dear dear friend our brother Wayne Dyer as an example Wayne wrote a lot of great books and Wayne was over there living in Hawaii and a friend of his said he had been diagnosed by the medical profession as having cancer and so he was trying to modify his diet a bit and do exercise he was doing the magical things that often times some doctors will say could be helpful and everything but a friend of his contacted him and said oh I am going to see John of God down in Brazil and I'm going to have him to pray for you and find a treatment for your condition and Wayne was not too impressed by this and continued on doing his things and then basically this woman a friend of his said oh I've got you an appointment for a psychic surgery on such and such a day and again Wayne was not too impressed okay psychic surgery and she said yes you'll have to be resting and you shouldn't be eating before the psychic surgery and gave him all the things that he should do and basically he ignored it and he went out for his jog along the beach and everything during the time of the psychic surgery he could hardly walk he didn't really follow the advice but when he came back you know he started to go maybe there's something to this psychic surgery and actually he did go into remission from the cancer from his friend just saying here I'm doing this for you I'm getting a gift for you to help you out now even the psychic surgery will involve some magic you know if there's someone in Brazil praying for you and you have to do these procedures and everything but he pretty much succumbed to join with his dear friend who is offering this help and then the symptoms went away so it's the spirit of joining it's the spirit of open-mindedness it's the spirit of even with all those books he'd done and all those workshops seminars and whatever it was just a great symbol to me of Wayne going okay maybe I maybe I don't have all the answers here a similar thing happened to Ram Dass when he had his stroke when he had his stroke he's there looking up at the tiles on the ceiling going look at this Mr. God's having a stroke that's what he thought imagine how here's Ram Dass he's been at it for years and he's laying there having a stroke going Mr. God's having a stroke be here now okay let's be here now my god I got a stroke going on here and then that didn't stop him that didn't stop him he got more humble through that stroke he turned to spirit because he said no this isn't the end of me this is the beginning of another phase of healing that is humbleness it doesn't matter how many books you've written it doesn't matter how many seminars you've done no matter how much success you've had in the world we're here to be humbled in the presence of God's healing power and to humbly open up that's what's really going on is that every day you're just coming into that humbleness of show me so I've chosen to live in that presence I feel that I handed everything over to God I've chosen not to talk about it I've chosen not to tell any audience I have for people is that the eagle or is that even coming here tonight and you said you and Star are going on this trip you're on an adventure you are on an adventure day by day moment by moment and you know a good name for your trip your adventure might be the show me this could be your show me trip that's where the that's what you're putting your trust in you're putting your trust in show me show me lead the way let the symbols come that are representing you God every day let the symbols of hope of comfort of calmness come to me and you show me and it's great you know to keep it that simple I think that I remember you made a trip over to see me in the big island of Hawaii it was a pretty big voyage too and that was wonderful too because we came into contact and then you've been listening to the words I'm speaking and letting them bring comfort and the lightness and the blessing that's your therapy that's your what you're choosing I'm on a heavy ride and I couldn't hear you I couldn't hear me just pounding the roof medications and things like that little story that happened to me I'll be close to two years now not quite I had a condition which I was told was incurable and I had medications and things and nothing was working and there was one treatment that right in the very beginning when I was died when I found out I had this condition I was told do not do this treatment it will make it worse it doesn't work so I avoided it for five years or so and got to a point nearly two years ago where I just couldn't live with this anymore and it was just my life was just so it was affecting me so badly that I just either was going to get cured or I wanted to die so I prayed about it and then I read a particular short paragraph one of Gary Renard's books that said something to the effect of sometimes a healing we can be healed but often our minds or our egos it's too confronting for a miracle healing so often you need something to hang your miracle on a treatment or something that you can hang it on so I thought this is the last thing I've got left to try is this treatment that I was told not to do and I prayed and I brought Holy Spirit in and I just completely thought well this is it, I'm going to try it and this will be my miracle and I really sort of virtually just washed myself with that every day this is going to be my miracle this is going to be my healing three weeks and then when the treatment came up it was a treatment over four months and each week I had to have this treatment which was very painful I had my first treatment and it was it was very painful and I went through about three days of pain and then the fourth day which happened to be my birthday I woke up pain free and I had pain free for the next three days also till the next treatment I went and had the second treatment and the nurse was well how did you survive the week it must have been terrible and I said well first three days was but then I had no pain and she said that's not possible you don't get cured that quick I said well it happened I decided to have a miracle she said well you're not because it usually takes quite a few treatments before anything even starts to get better so each week I had the treatment the pain would be shorter and shorter like instead of three or four days it would be two and a half so each time it got shorter and shorter till it got only half an hour after each treatment and now I'm fine I believe that I've been healed because I haven't had any problems at all since the end of that treatment so I hung my hat on that cure so it's like the symbol one of the symbols that I was told wasn't going to work but I said no I have faith in my higher power and that this is going to work and I don't know how do you describe that that's what happened I think there's something inside of us that knows that healing has to be simple and I think the simplest thing you can do when you have all these beliefs about bodies and symptoms and different systems of the body and how they all work together and everything like this is come down in your mind the idea that every second of every day I'm deciding between grievances and miracles and we'll say the grievances are the sickness and the miracle is the healing every second of every day all that other stuff is a bunch of fluff it's to try to make things more complicated than every day every second of every day it's grievances or miracles they come back into those great workbook lessons my grievances hide the light of the world in me so wow if I even got subtle grievances those are hiding the light of the world in me those are hiding the healing from me so in one sense remember that old fairytale the princess and the pea where the pea is under all the mattresses that's what we're in one sense there's something that goes up in you it's like I'm going for the miracle in some way in the mind it's like I'm going to decide for the miracle and that's that adventure you're on it's not really an adventure in time and space even though it seems you'll get to do some traveling you both meet people and see some sights and everything that's just the backdrop but every day if there's even the niggling of the grievance even somebody when they cross your mind you don't think of them with supreme joy and happiness you can be like a sleuth and go ah I see there's grievance there even the slightest bit of irritation or annoyance at something gives you an opportunity to choose again for the miracle so to me that's very practical because the ego wants to keep it really complicated under like buried under layers and layers of complication when actually we're choosing between miracles and grievances all the time and it's helpful when Jesus says there's no difference between minor irritation and annoyance and intense rage you see he's not a big fan of degrees of upset upset is upset and upset is the grievance we're worth it maybe people say well you have to go through we remind with a fine tooth comb okay let's be about it because I'm worth it why am I worth it because I'm a child of God I was created by God I'm worth it I'm worth the mind training I'm worth noticing a scrap here or scrap there and say oh be gone I'm not going to hold on to that I tell the story we're getting to the point of closure here but I'll tell my final story I worked at hospice I had to train to go through years of if it's probably before I was out on the floor I had to go through at least like a couple months I think of training and I was in the middle of my training for hospice there was a minister that was in there and he said let's go out to Wendy's and so we went out to have a burger we're sitting talking and everything and he looked across to me and he said I've been diagnosed with leukemia and it's pretty far advanced so I don't know how many more weeks I can continue on with the hospice training and we sat there having our Wendy's burger and our fries and everything and finally I looked at him and I said to him I said is there somebody in your life that used to be really close to you and it used to just talk and laugh and it was so close to you but you haven't spoken to them in years and he stood back and he put his hamburger down and he said how did you know about my sister and I said so you've you haven't spoken to your sister in years and I said you know what this leukemia diagnosis that you've got it's not what you think it is you've got grievance against your sister and you need to go home here's your homework for the hospice homework for the night you need to go home and bury the hatchet you need to go and call her and talk to her from your heart because you love her it's been the craziest thing that you haven't spoken how did you ever get into that and he's like you're right it is crazy it's just absolutely crazy but he had not made the connection between the grievance with his sister and the leukemia and so I didn't see him for a couple weeks but when I saw him the next time he had gone in and they had searched with their x-rays and everything and they couldn't find a trace of leukemia because he had gone through that opening of his heart with his sister and he did bury that he did let go and he did tell me it was so silly what he was holding onto and so to me that's what we're doing is we're allowing ourselves to make the connections in our mind like wow it's important for me to be free of grievances what does that even mean it means that anyone from your entire life could show up in your life and you could sit there you could look them in the eye you could smile at them you could give them a big long hug you could love them without any sense of animosity any sense of wrongdoing any sense of even irritation and annoyance they could come right back into your life and you could embrace them that's a miracle that's a practical miracle of doing that and really that's what we're doing with everything in our life where you could just hit somebody show right up into your life again and Jesus says dream softly of your sinless brother remember all the helpfulness that he gave instead of the hurts he has a beautiful little meditation there in the course dream softly of your sinless brother he only offered you love but you were mistaken when you saw a grievance when you saw something that was wounded in yourself that you wanted to throw out onto your brother or sister instead of throwing it back at the Holy Spirit and saying here take this I don't need this grudge anymore that's the most practical medicine that we could ever have and of course there's many doctors and you know I think of my friend Bernie Segal a Facebook friend of mine he was a surgeon right smack dab in the middle of the medical model and he just got into prayer and he started to see so many healings and he got so into it that where he worked people used to make jokes about him and put them up on the bulletin boards about the wacko prayer doctor that they got in the middle of them eventually of course he left the whole medical profession behind I don't need these kind of friends and these kind of witnesses every day I'm going for prayer he went on and him and his wife went around he wrote books love, medicine and miracles he used his profession he used everything that he had learned but to talk about the power of prayer and the power of the mind and he went out on the lecture circuit and he wrote many many books and he cast aside his surgery days because they no longer served him anymore there were just concepts that he could use in his talks he didn't have to go cutting into flesh anymore he could use the power of prayer that's the inspiration that's what we're all called to be we're called to be miracle workers and the spirit can use everything that we learned in our life we don't have to you know try to go out and get a new set of tools we've got plenty of tools already well he said I talked for two hours so I've already gone over some of you have other plans on this happy sunny day so hope I can just give you all hugs and spend a little time with you all before you take off for the day thank you so much for having me here and Tia and James thank you for organizing this beautiful place and we'll go back to your living room and have some tea thank you blessings thank you