 I think it's always a beautiful teaching, just the teaching of kindness because when we get too caught up into the world, we just lose track of the context. And one thing that helped me along my journey was when Jesus told me, never forget how frightened your brothers are. It helped to be reminded of that from Jesus over and over. Because if we forget that, then it's like we run off and we get involved in much to do about nothing. It's what Shakespeare called the world. And then the kindness becomes farther away from our awareness. But when we remember the fear level, that everyone who seems to come to this place has a lot of fear underneath, then I think we just have to keep that context in mind as we go through this awakening. And you might say that when the separation seemed to occur that the escape hatch was given instant or closed. So actually, honestly, we've had this escape hatch available for millennia. You know, it's always been there. We can't say that we were closed off from heaven in any real sense. But it must mean that there must have been a huge amount of fear to flee into form, to flee into time and space, to be an enormous amount of fear of the light, to come up with such an intricate, complex, mesmerizing, clever disguise for ourselves. There must have been a lot of energy that went into that to try to hide in time and space. And so even though the escape hatch has been there all along, and we could say there's nothing really wrong with the escape hatch is active. It's very active. It's not defective or faulty. The spirit doesn't come up with a faulty escape hatch. It again must mean that there's quite a fear of waking, a terror of waking that to make such an elaborate defense against awakening. And one time I was in Michigan and somebody came up to me and they go, oh my gosh, we found the perfect Star Trek episode for you today. We thought we watched one the other day, but this one was very, very strong. And it was about Captain Janeway and her crew visiting a planet that had undergone a planetary disaster. And in order to protect themselves, they buried themselves underground to wait out the planetary disaster, because the atmosphere of the planet was unimaginable. So to survive the planetary disaster, they buried themselves. And so when the ship arrives, it comes close to the planet, all they can see is the desolate planet. And they think, well, it's not inhabited anymore. But when they go into the surface, they get faint signs of life. And so then they do a little bit of a computer analysis to see what has happened. And they surmise that this society has put themselves to sleep. And then they check out the escape hatch, and the escape hatch is functioning. So I'm like, hmm, I could see there's some parallels here. Planetary disaster, escape hatch is functioning. And yet those that have put themselves into stasis, those that have put themselves to sleep are not using the escape hatch. So maybe we need to take a little look at this metaphor from Star Trek, because if it's there and it's functioning and we're not using it, we maybe need to take note of something. In this particular Star Trek, there's so much fear that the inhabitants that have put themselves to sleep, the fear in their mind generates a character in their dream world, a fear character that is constantly threatening them with death. That's what keeps them so preoccupied. They're so afraid of death in this dream world that they don't even bother to look for the escape hatch. And another thing that's interesting is that everyone in this dream world is wearing a mask. And another thing that's interesting about this dream world is that it's all one thing. It's, you know, everyone's dressed colorfully and they're wearing a mask. And they're even dancing almost like to try to distract themselves from the escape hatch. And if anyone tries to escape, they go to the guillotine and they have their head chopped off. But I thought, in terms of Earth, mine is such a preoccupation with survival. It's almost like we're trying to weave in some other things. But in all the countries I've gone to, survival is so such a heavy, heavy thing. It's like that's the gravity of this world. It's not just the gravity that seems to hold all the bodies on the planet, but the gravity of the planet. But it's the gravity of the state of mind that's so preoccupied with survival. It's part of our conditioning. It's part of our family systems. You know, when you become an adult and you date, you know, it's like it's not too far into the first date. What do you do for a living? What do you do for a living? It's so programmed and it's so heavy. And therefore, it's almost like you just squeeze in a little time to ponder some of these deeper philosophical questions or ponder this waking up thing. So I think for me, when I came across the course, it took quite a lot of willingness to give myself over to the direction that this was going because that ego voice in my mind was like, don't waste too much time on this. We have other important things to do. And I think all of us have dealt with that, whether it's doing music or doing art or all the different things we do, even our spiritual practice, it's like there seems to be this concept of balance, and we do have to maintain some kind of equilibrium or we could seem to flip out. But there's this sense of the gravity of survival. So that's why the Spirit is really calling us and saying, well, if you go for awakening, that is actually the most important thing you could go for. That promise is that the Spirit says, I will provide for you if you go for it, that the means will be provided, that the means are in the end, and that the means are given along with the end. So you get the whole package. Don't have to like figure out the means to reach this end, which is what we have to do in this world. Any task we have, if you want to build a house, you've got to come up with the means. The means come before the end. But not with awakening, the means are included in. So we have this strength within us that if we begin to move in that direction and trust in it, then things will start to shift in the dream world just in terms of symbols as messages from the Spirit, as the light, using the dream symbols to say, this is going to work out. You're going to actually go deeper and deeper into this experience and it's all going to be handled. So I think that's very important in this journey, that whoever is sent to you and whoever you are sent to, there's a huge blessing there. And the blessing is a state of gratitude and a state of mind and that everything else should be added unto you that helps you serve that purpose, awakening. It's really important that we trust that. We have to really trust that, because otherwise it's just going to be difficult. It's going to be, if you don't really trust that, there's going to be this nagging voice in your consciousness that's always going to be nagging you about anything you do in terms of the spiritual practice. It's just going to keep nagging and nagging away. It's going to tell you it's not practical. And at some point, with my prayers and meditations and readings and everything I was doing, it just got to the point where I felt like I crossed a threshold and I thought, no, it's actually getting easier. It's easier for me to devote my life to this than it is for me to resist it, even though the nagging voice was trying to tell me it was the opposite. You know, make a little timeout here and there. Okay, make a little timeout. It's like, no, I don't want to make a little timeout. I want to make a lot of timeouts. And the more I did that, the more I screeched. I'm like, whoa, you're going to pay for that. You know, you're falling behind. All the other people are putting their time in. It's like even cultures, I think sometimes in certain cultures like Asian cultures where there's so much emphasis on achievement and being productive in this anatomy and starting to educate children younger and younger and younger and trying to teach them the ways, the technologies and everything with the intent of making them productive citizens to contribute to the gross national product of the country faster and faster. And that strikes me as so different from my childhood where I would go out and I would be in the creek, playing with clay and crawdads and just I think I had a lot of play time, a lot of time just to just to be without any kind of demands seemingly placed on me. And I think that that is important. We can we can learn that from children. And I went down to South America too. I was down in South America cultures in Argentina and Colombia and Venezuela. But I just was like, oh, you guys, I love your siestas. And they were almost apologizing for the siestas in the cities, at least not in the rural areas. We all took siestas together, no, not about it. But in the cities, I noticed that that they were starting to lose the tradition of the siesta. And I would go to these meetings like this. And I would say, oh, no, please, don't lose the siesta. That's one of your greatest gifts to the whole world. Take those afternoon naps, close the business down, pull down the shutters. You know, I said, this is important. This is very important. Because there's a sense of ease with that. This is a loosening from time of whatever the eight hour work day and the rigidity and structure around that work to live, work to live, work to live, you know, it's deeply ingrained programming. So to me, it has been a journey of trust and thinking, if I really go for this, if I really surrender here, then I really trust that everything will work out. And that's something that came through early on for me, was how doors would just open, things would be show up, things would be provided. And I thought this, maybe it seems extreme to the world or radical to the world, but it actually feels natural to me. And that's what Kate was talking about. She ran out of some of the spaces that she saw to answer the call, off to answer invitations. I felt, that's what I was told too, that I would be invited. It wasn't like I had to go personally try to make my way or carve out a niche or find a way to do it. That life takes care, there's a rhythm, there's a purity with that. And I needed to build my confidence and trust that that's just the way it would go. And then as I really relaxed into it, it was like, just like being carried down a river, it was so gentle. And most of the places I went was like, here we are in a living room. And it's been about 25 years of living rooms and basements and backyards and barbecues and beautiful places everywhere, just so many invitations. And that was not again part of my conditioning growing up. Nobody said you lived that way. That was like an unknown realm. And so it hasn't been like briefcases and board meetings and conferences and hotels and so forth. It's been a very different kind of travel. It's been going like from heart to heart and home to home. And heart to heart meetings, holy encounters, connections. And through enough of it when you give yourself over to it, you start to really feel it in your heart. You start to say, oh yeah, this is natural. This feels more natural than the other way, which is work, work, work. Save, save, save, spend, spend, spend. You know, it just, I don't know, it just didn't seem very natural. And then these last maybe 15 or 20 years when I've worked so closely with people, it's almost like I was an unwinding counselor. Like I would join these people and they would say, yeah, my world's falling apart. I'd say, good. Good. I'd say, oh yeah, you're unwinding. You're dismantling. You are cracking apart so that you could come whole again. And I had a lot of training in psychology and studied a lot of different spiritual peppers, but it was like, it was more just relaxing, let the spirit do it, of unwinding from these concepts and roles and taking on a function that was using the skills and abilities that had been developed previously, but in a whole different direction. So that was interesting because I, I think, I think actually the seemingly the hardest nuts to crack were corporates. When you go into corporate, you know, you wear a pretty hard mask. You've got to really take on a lot of unnatural things to go corporate. So I think that the toughest nuts that I've watched always be a crack. And he's got to peel and peel and crack and crack and peel and peel. There's a lot of crack and peel with that because it's like the ego has said that corporate gives you everything. It gives you all the perks. The perks of this world. I'm going to perks of the spirit. And so it's like, it's convincing. And the other thing about it that as I really discovered was that this world was backwards and upside down. So it was everything was inverse. So the more you believe you were successful in succeeding in this world, the more you wound yourself into darkness and farther away from the light, the actually success was a completely inverse equation in terms of awakening. So I had learned a lot of things in 10 years of university, both in undergrad and grad, but it's like now I have all the tools and the instruments that the ego says to, you know, play on earth and succeed. And the spirit was like, yep, now give them all to me because I've got to use them to heal and bless everyone. We're going to have to wake up every single one, which is really just reflections of one mind is asleep. It's not like there are multiple minds asleep or multiple souls, it's really just one. But it seems that way when you're in the quicksand, when you're in the mesmerism of the world, it seems like a daunting task. And then, and you're in that darkness and then you look around at all the others and they're all marching. It looks like Hitler's armies march, march, march, corporate is its own version of march, march, march, you know, to the beat of money, instead of the beat of taking over countries and power. It's the same thing. It's marching to money. So it's been quite fascinating because then I, when I traveled the world and I lived out in the woods and the trailer and I would go around and meet people, everything. I found the ones that were most ready to be unwound and most ready to crack open were a lot of people who had gone through severe addictions. Actually, people had come through like 12-step programs that had been knocked down to their knees and their knees were on the ground and they could look in the eye and they could go, it's not to be found here, but they had gone through extreme pain and torture, really torturing themselves with whatever their chosen addiction was, just trying to distract away from the emptiness and so in the world's eyes they were like the forgotten ones, they were the ones that fell through the cracks, they were the ones that didn't make it in the ladder and so there were, sometimes they were still pretty sad and they had a lot of despair and I would sit down with them and I would say, no, no, no, you don't understand. This is actually wonderful and I say, wonderful, how is this wonderful? And I said, instead of being twice removed from reality, you're only once removed from reality. You're closer than you think, you're cracked open, you're down, you're coming closer and closer to a point of total disillusionment with the world, because no one goes into reality without first going through a disillusionment with the substitute world, with the fake world that was projected by the ego, so it was like we had some kind of a connection of bond because they were knocked down to their knees and I had been knocked down to my knees and somehow we were all on the floor and going, okay, it just goes up from here, you know, the ego song, and I know that you can't let me down because I'm already standing on the ground, you know, it's like we're in that place, we're on the ground, and that's good. So I think that's important, that's why even a lot of things like the Course in Miracles, where has the Course been most impactful? The Course was translated, ascribed and translated into different languages, but there was a professor down in Mexico named Guzman and he got over the Course and he decided he would just translate it on his own to Mexico and somehow it got into the Mexican prison system, the Mexican prison system of Course in Miracles, and oh did that take off, imagine yourself in prison for whatever earthly reasons, but you're there and you're a captive audience and you're in a cell and suddenly somebody brings you a Course in Miracles. Where you've got a lot of time on your hands, so to speak, and not a lot of distractions, they've taken away your tequila, they've taken away your family, they've taken away your television sets, your musical instruments, you're in a prison, and so I first heard wind of like all these miraculous experiences happening down in the Mexico prison system and people that were getting early paroled, they were actually getting out of prison through spiritual transformation. I don't think so, I think he avoided prisons, I don't think he actually spent much time in prison in his life, he was out running the drug reviews and so forth, but I thought, you know there's something to the conditions, the conditions of the mind have to be ripe to go for this, and then when I went to South America, I first went to Argentina in 2003 and the economy had just collapsed, the value of the peso was very very low, I ended up getting a hotel room on the ocean with breakfast for like seven or eight dollars a night, that's a collapse of currency and children were starving, babies were dying, there was corruption sweeping through the system and I noticed that when I first went to Buenos Aires, they had so many course groups that they had stopped counting, they had stopped counting in a city of maybe 15 million people and I'd gone to places around the United States and Canada, but that was my first trip overseas and I thought hmm, and I would say that's gone on now for some time. In Mexico City and in Buenos Aires, long ago they stopped counting how many groups, because it was catching on like wildfire, of course the miracles came, we always told you Shakespeare and blank verse and it came in English, do you think that English is the original language, do you think that most books in the world are English because it's it's came in English? No, there's more Spanish Course in Miracles books on the planet than there are English books. You can start to see, we know that in the Spanish culture Jesus is very big, Catholicism, there's a great adoration and Guadalupe and all the saints, if you've been to Mexico you notice there's a lot of parties, there's a lot of celebrating the saints, it's very devotional. I think that devotion is very important, I think that even though all those centuries they would devoted to worshiping and practicing the teachings of Jesus as best they could, I think most people started to realize that Christianity had kind of been hijacked, especially if you're listening to the promises that come through the Bible and you're not experiencing the promises in your life and you're following a theology, you're doing all the rituals, you're trying to be the best Christian you can be and something's not working, then you start to get to a point in your mind where you see there's something fishy here, the wayshower, I have a great love for the wayshower but something about the practice is not working and then especially when your babies are dying, when your economies start crashing and you start to lose the comforts and conveniences of the world, when corruption races through your government, when there's drug lords and drug trafficking and sex trafficking and all these things and you've got a devotion and a practice and it's not working, there's something in your mind that goes, hmm we've been hoodwinked here, there's something not right, well that's what happened with the Course, it's the Course came along and the minds were ready saying, oh we want the real Jesus, we don't want a paternal system, the patriarchal system, we don't want a system of hierarchies of bishops and cardinals and popes and ministers, we don't want to be told that we can do these certain sacrificial practices or rituals over and over and over and over and they don't have an impact in our state of mind. So in one sense, that was very important when Jesus sent me around the world all these cultures because I could see that just like the parable from the Bible, if you throw the seeds out, it's important that there be fertile soil for the seeds, the seeds will not germinate, the seeds will not sprout if you have too many thistles and thistles, thorns and thistles are distractions. I also noticed that there was, of course, was taking hold and seeming the much more impactful, more third world countries and in places where materialism had not run rapid. The materialism is the thorns and the thistles, that's why in the parables in the Bible the seeds just could not spring up because there was too much else there and we talked this morning about the heart and we talked also about the altar within. If you have too much on the altar that even if you have good seeds to sprout they don't have the nourishment, they don't have the stillness required. In some of the places I went, they had like in Argentina when I went there I went out to the rural areas and they could not afford to buy the course. It was like bootleg course. They would have like one chapter out of 31 chapters that they have translated into Spanish and I would find a group of women, sometimes mothers, who were around all around passing around this paper, which was one chapter that they had, I could see it in their eyes. When they first met me I was just a strange man from a strange land so they had a lot of doubt and suspicion on their faces. Who is this man? What is he doing out here? He's out of place, he doesn't look, but then as I joined with them and I would start speaking through them and the smiles and the laughter came, it would usually only take maybe 15 or 20 minutes when we would start to feel that spirit connection, that heart connection, laughter, lightness and lots of curiosity because again they felt like they were dealing with something profound but they had a lot of questions very very curious. So these kind of travels with symbols to my mind about how if we really have to make a space we have to we have to make a nurturing space in our life for the spiritual journey and even people that I've worked with for years it started off usually going into their homes and it was like a lot of homes there was a lot of busyness there was a lot of people pleasing going on there was a lot of protectionism going on there was a lot of hiding going on there was in some cases chaos I could come into what seemed to be a chaotic family but just with the presence to say no you're worth it this devotion to spirit you need to put that as your top priority it did seem crazy to put it about finance in the world where everything's based on survival but but actually we need to invert the priorities in order to find the escape patch because the escape patch is functioning there's nothing wrong there's not a fault that you escape patch but it takes a devotion to that escape patch it takes a prioritizing now I've been doing this for 25 years and I have a number of people that have left their jobs have left their families left their countries and the only way to do this is you have to do it in your mind you can't just change the form you can't do the little switcheroo thing where you are the geographical cure I'll just move to another place for the the relationships which cure I'll just swap I'm going to swap an angry spouse for a new model and then oops I ended up with the same person the hand goes up to try to swap the form is a little different the form is a little different but the content we have to do this from the inside out that was a movie that came out recently inside out Pixar so good get in there to those emotions wow that was fantastic that's the kind of movies we had coming out Pixar came back they were kind of a dying community but inside out really lifting them up we have to live from the inside out we have to live intuitively we have to tell ourselves we can live intuitively we're not going to do it anymore people's opinions and external advice external advice call this external advice not going to live that way anymore because why because it's a delay it's delaying our experience of joy and happiness so and I have to say the way that the life of David played out was nothing nothing that I ever imagined I've worked with a lot of people a lot of one-on-one working with people over the years all for dismantling that was that's why we met for lunch we met for dinner that's why we took those long walks that's why we watched those movies that's why we came together was all for healing for dismantling for letting go of this faulty thought system and then communities I think Parma Hansa Yogananda said before he laid aside his body he said there will be groups study groups support groups communities that will spring up he could he was just foretelling the way to the spirit uses this this is not a solitary journey the lonely journey fails we need to join we need to collaborate this ego is so clever that it's really quick to say out of my mouth my life I'm going to do this all by myself I'm going to do it all on my own and if Jesus says in the chorus if you look for truth only in yourself you will not find it he's not talking about the kingdom of heaven is within within your mind but he's saying if you look for truth only in yourself you will not find it it's the only myself and I if you think personally you're going to find the way to truth it isn't going to happen and therefore it's like okay then show me the way well these different configurations will come into your life the configuration that you have not planned that you did not foresee they are coming because these configurations are necessary for support you will be vibrationally drawn to your tribe you have to let go of the past whatever that was whatever configuration you found when you came to this world it was the ego that picked that configuration I had a point in my life where I started to say Jesus what is going on and what's going on what will become of me what will become of my life and I said can you give me I just need some symbols here can you give me some really clear direct symbols that would really be helpful especially around relationships like where is this heading I I don't know what's happening to certain people they're disappearing from my life and sometimes the friends that I've known for years and what is going on here here can you give me an analogy a metaphor he said yeah he said I'll use a card game card game 52 card 52 card pick up that's 52 card pick up I didn't do it in my relationships he said yeah put all those cards on the floor okay you see them down there the ego dealt the deck the ego deals with the deck and so I said so where is this going he said I want you to pick up every card off the floor those are your relationships pick them all up and get them back in the deck they've been dealt by the ego the spirit didn't deal with that ego dealt the deck I want you to pick all those cards up and get it back into the deck and I want you Jesus said to hand me the deck and let me deal the cards now well I tried to stash my grandmother in my pocket because really I thought she's really she was like a symbol of unconditional love she never had a harsh word for me to say so I just tried this I was going to play 51 card pick up and then Jesus said no that's not the way this works you have to give me every card and so I hesitated again because I didn't want to give grandmother William over to him but he said oh give it over cough it up and basically he said now and then I will do the dealing and I said what what will it be like well I get to see those cards again well some of the I get to see my 52 cards or not he said some of the cards may come back but remember I will deal them I will deal them to you and you must let go of all expectations for that deck and that was like a very very important part of my life because I was having a lot of guilt and a lot of heaviness over trying to maintain relationships and there's so much energy that goes into it we saw our movie clip today how the brother and the father they had good intentions but just didn't see how misguided it was inverting an entire system to try to play out what they believed the daughter the sister needed and and none of us now wants in our own best interest so this 52 card pick up analogy was very important for me and some of them did come back but there's more than 52 cards as I started traveling around the world and even meeting all of you your part of a giant deck from my mind of those that the spirit has dealt back to me with the purpose of awakening that's why in a quantum sense that's why we seem to perceive a room full of people that are very interested in spiritual awakening and love and life and happiness and joy because the spirit has brought us together it was our guidance that brought us to share these words to seemingly share the space to allow the space to be used for such a sacred purpose you can feel the depths and you can feel the reverence and how important this is this is not a casual encounter this is a configuration that was coming about because of our desire and really that's why I like quantum physics because everything we perceive in this world is just a reflection of our consciousness Newtonian physics told us that there was a real word up world out there and then you could measure it and experiment with it and learn from it but it's just not the case quantum is showing us that that consciousness is the root of what we call the world and quantum physicists are sounding a lot like Jesus there was a quantum physicist that said there is no world Paul Davies said that many years ago then I got to Jesus lesson 152 and he says there he's saying too there is no world quantum physicist Jesus science religion there's no world outside of what you think the thoughts that you think you think in the world you see are identical there's really not an inner and outer that's just another illusion of dichotomy and so as you open up and you allow your mind to accept the way things are in a quantum way you see absolutely that everything is connected everything is completely connected there's nothing that's disunited there's nothing that's not connected and as you give yourself over to that and you appreciate the feelings that start to come the joy the love and happiness love naturally radiates and extends itself you're not even going to have to figure out what you're going to do with your life it's just given it's just given to you one moment and then the next moment and the next moment all that anxiety of what do I do what do I do that finally just gives way to you're like a leaf in the river and the river is a big river and it's got you and you can just float down and life could be as easy as floating that's like a prophecy that that nursery rhyme then turns into a giant prophecy of our entire life that we are deserving of just being carried and the feeling of that life is involuntary if you if you use the analogy of breathing it's not like you go through the day who goes through the day counting all their in-breaths and all their outbreaks we would think that's ridiculous at the end of the day okay how many thousand in and how many thousand out what's the statistics what's the data it's ridiculous and yet we do take things in this world to be serious jobs and savings and possessions and abilities and skills things are given a lot of weight money for example it's just because it's a symbol of exchange that seems to work for needs which are all still beliefs then money takes on elevated status and jesus put out a couple pamphlets along with his course of miracles and he did have one sense in there about money it is only three words money is nothing nothing no thing money is nothing how different that is from the perception of a human being where currency is associated with life with survival quality of life we've gone so far into the darkness it's something that means absolutely nothing has now taken on importance and i've seen different teachers talk about manifesting and manifesting abundance and somehow you're supposed to believe that the more aligned you are with god the more material abundance that you'll have well jesus wouldn't agree with that although the spirit is very very gentle so whatever symbols you need to build your confidence in the power of your mind including manifesting can get used by that gracious spirit just to show you how beautiful how perfect how wonderful you are in spirit to take you in that direction but it's it's quite interesting that we have even churches and teachings that kind of associate manifesting abundance material abundance i remember i used to read some books and they would talk about abundance consciousness and poverty consciousness and i would say so i finally started looking through a course of miracles and i thought well surely jesus has something to say about poverty since it was writing the beatitudes blessed are the poor in spirit so i thought there must be something in the course about poverty oh yeah jesus defines poverty straight on its ego thinking has nothing to do with material abundance or material lack of material abundance its ego thinking the same was simplicity you know i used to think we have these ideas about living a simple life and i love that story of the the indian guru who basically all he had to his name so to speak was this little g-string that he wore and uh and i think in a mat that he sat on a mat and g-string and then when when they stole his mat he was very upset because he thought he got down to two and he three a body a mat and a g-string and it just shows that he got so angry when they took his mat that it was like it just shows no it's not that's not simplicity and simplicity is inspired thinking in the line of the source with holy spirit that's that is your abundance that is your abundance and that is your simplicity too so we don't even have to worry about what they say about complex world and how the images keep dividing and marketing and all the explosion of images what could that even concern you when you see that a line of the source is where the simplicity is that there be billions or trillions or zillions of images who cares they're all versions of nothing anyway it's not people saying to me is the world getting worse or better it's well it's completely new to us it's your perception that determines we don't even have to we don't have to think like that anymore worse and better you don't have to think like that so to me this is these are very practical ideas very relaxing ideas ideas you can fully put your whole heart in and you can live these are not just writings on the wall or sayings like the songs we were all just getting into the rhythm of the songs and the depth and of the experience this christ was said beyond the words beyond the instruments beyond the sound can you clarify what you mean by the poverty is what the ego ego thinking is it just that we're proceeding we're proceeding creating poverty by by judging this that wouldn't you about that exactly well it's actually just even more direct than that that all ego thoughts are part of the condition of poverty so what he's doing is he's lifting our definition of poverty from the world we might say poor countries you know poor conditions and so on and so forth he's lifting it up to the level of mind and he's saying as long as you're thinking with the ego you're thinking with the ego thought system you're poor so basically that would be the majority we could say the majority of the world and of course is poor in that sense jesus was wealthy and and many are poor in the sense that that they they have ego thinking they don't know who they are and i've found that that helped me too because i started to lift all my definitions up like for example when i had all these dialogues with jesus i was always saying well i want a sense of freedom i have i have a sense of of intimacy and i do want a sense of ease and abundance in my life and what i found was that he said yeah again those are all things that that are part of your natural inheritance you were created in those states of mind but your definitions now are so tied into form that your definitions of intimacy are so tied up in the body that your definitions of abundance are so tied up in money and your definitions of freedom are so tied up in the mobility of the body and he said you've gone off into poverty into ego thinking and so when we free our mind we do this mind training we have our mental practice our devotional spiritual practice we really are coming into a true sense of abundance freedom and intimacy you know he says you really believe you would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs he's poking fun at that when he talks about the real world he's talking about the happy dream he said the real world has no buildings and no stores to buy endless things that you don't even want and don't even need and he he just really starts needling the whole perception of the world which is important because when the mind's addicted to that perception it needs some kind of a contrast something from beyond the trap to to lift it out of the trap and also i came from a very much of an education background i think a lot of a lot of people have been part of that belief that better education will solve the problems and we've had a lot of educational reforms actually if you look back at the decades we've had many many educational reforms we've had lots of education we still have world wars you know regional conflicts we still have seemingly poverty starvation all the problems of the world education hasn't solved anything and i came from a family where my mother was a teacher i was in the university for 10 years i'm teaching graduate assistants and all the i was right in the middle of it i even went into into education teachers college was called so i got to see it from the inside and everything and that's when the course came in to my life and so i dropped it i i did dump it like a hot potato because i was being convinced from the course that he said you've over learned this world the learning is has imprisoned you it has not freed you and i came from a background where education was really great stuff i mean everybody saved money for education and i went right into it for 10 years i got to go in the middle of the beast and check it out from the inside and start to see oh it's part of a problem it's not the solution that seems pretty radical i've not been invited to high schools i end up here in this living room instead of commencement seasons i wouldn't mind going to maharishi uh university where our friend to nekari has delivered a very nice commitment and that was quite well received you know but um but it's it's it's been showing us that the world's backwards and upside down and that just means we really do need to be very open and intuitive because we're being taken in a direction that's different than any of us were raised with we're beginners every day we're we're like they say then beginners my we're we're happiest when we're in beginners stay in mind and and call us about absolutely everything and start the day with that friend of mine like i do not know and show me it's such a glorious way to live every single day i have a question what do you think about um you know we try and practice this sort of thing you go to sleep at night you have these dreams that are completely undermining it and it's not something that you you know seem to have control over yeah you can talk to that i mean i was saying that when i got here because chris when chris came up and put us down but he had a night of of dreams that were kind of yeah pretty full on intense he was glad he woke up in the morning glad that's not real but that happens a lot of times when i've i've been with people and live with them and the other dreams get stirred up really i think in a health way it's it's actually possible before you go to sleep to invite the holy spirit to come into your dreams i've tried that yeah and you're saying it just got even more stirred which is good it's like the holy spirit is doing the i call it rotor router yeah it's like grinding down there helping to just stir some of the compressed debris but um if it's if there's night terrors or nightmares a lot of times it's good if you get even woken up in the middle of the night with those kind of wacky intense dreams to wake up and journal not so much trying to figure out the dream or getting too much into dreams symbology but just notice the emotions like when you get up really write out those emotions because again that's for our outer rings but i think it essentially it comes down to like punishing ego type stuff you know the ego going oh no you're not no you're not going where you think you're going during the day you're staying right here with me yeah fall asleep like a retaliation like okay you you're going to study the course during the day well i've got your night that's the way it works yeah actually you laugh about it but for those of us in the literature but yeah we're like we're all nodding our heads there's a lot in that same experience yeah did you just say that's kind of like a good sign that that means the ego is feeling threatened and that's why it's shining for its insistence at that point yeah yeah you might say that that's the point it's almost like scare tactics like you know we see it even active on politics somebody's competing in a political race they start to dip down in the polls okay pull out the negative advertising let's scare the population into voting you know it's it's very much what the ego does yeah with the nighttime drinks it's it's really trying to pick up the scare tactics yeah a friend my friend Francis sent me this article she found on facebook and what was kind of fascinating about it was it was these group of masters that came together that that really a while back i think it was maybe in thailand had had kind of introduced the pasana to the world and these vipassana masters come together just like different ones from different places or unions they vipassana masters come together these are the ones that have been at it the longest other ones were the founders they brought it to the world and so and they interestingly enough they came together and they went they kind of shared their notes and they were stunned by what they were all experiencing these kind of nightmares these deep dark dreams coming up uh basically that puts it in the context when you have a group of vipassana masters come together and realize there's something daunting in the mind that they don't know what it is vipassana masters and they basically decided we let's start opening up away from our practice and looking at spiritual pathways let's start looking at the mind psychology you know we need better tools this is a vipassana masters we need better tools because what we're facing is some kind of beast underneath it now that was that starts to put things a little bit into context and the pasana masters hit hit the darkness then you know that is a sounding of the alarm for everyone like and so people have asked me about that they say how did you get to be consistently happy you know and it's like well it's like remember when we they were sending men men to the moon the Apollo rocket launches and everything remember those Apollo rockets those gigantic stages of fuel the big one at the bottom and then another stage and another stage and a little teeny cone on the top where they as well said it was like like 0.0001 percent humans 0.002 technology and then boom lots of fuel that's what's unique to escape the gravity of the earth right so on my spiritual journey I just decided I'm going to pack extra fuel and then a little more extra fuel and some more extra fuel because I ain't coming back this rocket's not going up and going down into motion this baby's going to be packed packed I mean packed and that's what we mean by living a life of devotion what is your fuel and your devotion but the power of your mind but your devotion you know so that's why you you get drawn into this and then when you get into it the ego is going to try to scare you away from being devoted because if you're devoted then it's that's like the days are numbered the writing's on the wall you know and ego definitely doesn't want that because it depends on the mind for its existence the ego is like parasite we know we know what a parasite is it basically depends on something for its existence it's it's drawing the energy from the mind and dissipating that energy and cranking that energy and turning it into guilt and it's making lots of guilt so that you'll say stuck into the gravity of the world and this is worth saying go in the other direction so it's been good it's been actually good I think that's where our spiritual communities have come in just as symbols like Nikita was up in Canada just kind of wandering wondering well what's going on but whatever it was that brought you in deeper you know it started to provide this the hope the sustenance the sustaining value of that and that's the way it's happened for a lot of us you know we come in we see the value of of the devotion and the support just being able to kind of give your life over to such a calling again it's not so much the form but it is in the practice in the mind you know just not Jesus says you're you're much too tolerant of mind wandering I says so anybody who thinks you could just stick your fingers together you know he's he's saying no actually you're much too tolerant of mind wandering and the whole workbook is designed to take you deeper and deeper and make you more and more devoted and he's just using the words more at the beginning and then taking the mind into deeper practices he doesn't even say that that that we need to go through a preparation because he says later on in the workbook we will attempt a direct approach to God and you need to be ready because if you attempt a direct approach to God and you aren't ready and you aren't prepared it will be he says more traumatic than beatific the ego will screech like it's being destroyed if you haven't taken the preliminary steps to get yourself it would be like yeah it would be like trying to jump like Superman or fly up to a next plateau when you've actually given a ladder and he's saying come with me and keep climbing and keep climbing and stay with it and don't get too stuck on any of the ladder just keep pushing off but we'll get there so to me that's what of course America's is it's a systematic mind training program to meet you wherever you believe you are doesn't matter where you believe you are in consciousness jesus is almost like you're in a pit and he's lowering a ladder down and he's saying just grab hold and you say where i don't care where here i'm swinging the ladder around i'm just ramming which which wrong is i know i don't care just any part is a big ladder just grab on and that's the way it works and once once you grab on and you really take hold then then you've got something really to work with you're not just fishing in the dark and not just in survival mode just trying to make it through another day trying to make the best that you can you know you actually have a purpose and and then the and the steps will follow the runs will follow and you won't be getting anything more than you can handle i know sometimes people say are you sure you're really sure it is true we it can get intense at times but we never do get more than we can handle you mentioned you're gonna like two times three times and we're going to the temple for five years and in that temple it teaches a lot like to meditate meditation is everything there but i wanted to ask you you mentioned also about devotion and meditation of course as we talk be still we have to but how is your routine to meditate what did you suggest well to me at some point it dawned on me because i was asking Jesus about that but but actually the workbook is the meditation practice if you really look closely you can see it's a systematic meditation practice which is also fits in with the saying that Jesus says in the course he just he does say the course is just one form of the universal curriculum and there are many others but he does say at one point this course hits everything you need and i like that because here's someone who's made it through the illusion of time and space back to eternity then i'm going to pay very careful attention to everything that this voice is saying to me so when i got the course i took that as like oh this is like i mean jesus at my lunch table now that's why i would pray and use it as an article i can't hear a voice i'm going to pray and open this book and it was just as effective as if sitting in the chair across from me and then when he says this course has everything you need i was one of those kind of spiritual adventurers that had lots of books and i had all kinds of adventures and read many many things but when the course came to my life i actually felt how practical that was a direct that i actually stopped reading everything else including the newspaper those little things when you bubble down these little cartoons no how did you get introduced to the course i came to california and i came to southern california and then what and i went to a how did you i went to a humanistic psychology conference in la joya with rob with uh francis bond and carl rogers i was like in or then i found that they two students of tara sing a teacher of the course had had the book they had the course there and a book nothing real can be threatened and came up next forgiveness and jesus i bought all three and i i said i'm going to all these things that i had planned to go to i spent then i came here to that i came to la to burn side avenue where they had the their little house and then that was a very powerful experience the sayings on the wall and meeting the people and it was kind of like i became initiated very quickly into that but i also took it as this was i was thinking that these instructions were coming from spirit to me in a very direct way and i was going to follow and of course i had overestimated where i was in the spiritual journey i was i thought i've got the course now which mountain do i go to to ascend and then the spirit left it's a good beginning that we're not here we're not ascending today there's almost like a chuckle inside he's wants to ascend you know because it's we all go through that and i'm like yes yeah i can't come across a lot of that stuff and everything and um yeah i think i've enjoyed some of the teachings and everything it's again the idea of um of christ returning or whatever a lot of people are interested in you know a lot of ideas around that but i would say that the first coming of christ was was we'll say the creation of christ by god and the second coming of christ is is remembering yourself as the christ so it's purely more of a level of mind awakening not so much in terms of different beings and everything that we have a full plague every day to deal with in forgiving the world and accepting ourselves as they're living christ so there's a lot of the things that have been symbolic and so um and there's even books that come out there like they call them coursing miracles spin-offs or complementary courses and all kinds of things like that i could i could spend a month going into all the nuances of that i myself have taken the approach of taking on the spiritual practice and then in the 1990s people there were people that started showing up and saying david i am your student you are my teacher and i kind of looked back it's strange and i looked at the manual for teacher and i said well that must be what's happening this phenomenon but um these people have come from a wide variety of backgrounds and so what i would do is i would just they would always have quoted this one quoting that one this avatar this teacher this book this video this tvv i would say well i don't mind i'm not going to compare and contrast any kind of teachers for whatever because that's pointless i said if you are working with a book or a mantra or a spiritual practice or anything that you find triggers something within yourself that brings up your authentic question then you can bring it in to our sessions and quote it and then we'll go into it but we're not i'm not going to be making proclamations and declarations on teachers and books and all that stuff it's pointless it's a comparison as an ego device and i have no interest in doing that so that was good because then they felt free to bring in whatever book whatever photograph or whatever was triggering or helping them and we would we would use it to go into it together and then i think as it moved on i i put a strong emphasis on divine providence on undoing these beliefs and scarcity and all these dependencies just learning to be very intuitive and and get in touch with your internal teacher and follow the internal teacher and recognize the strength and the invulnerability that comes from that intimate experience with the internal teacher and then they could call it whatever they want the words don't even matter but the experience is like let's strengthen that let's grow strong so that's been really very amazing to behold over the years and so in the end it's part of that collapse of thinking that there's an inner and an outer even it's you know it's it's just coming to that state of grace excuse me that presence and radiating that presence with every possible opportunity that comes are you ascending is it i feel like are you ascending when you leave here this time what do you mean by this time i've been saying that yeah the gig is up this time time i've even a friend of mine here from california said that that i would be the body would be gone in less than two years well and so i said i don't know i just i'm not really interested in the form because to me it's a state of mind whatever but yeah it's just two years from when what was that less than two that means right now i think it's where it's coming from yeah it's you mentioned right now i've forgiven the world for the errors that we have done i deal a lot with field and i think that's an issue that i don't know how is that how can i do that i forgive the world for all the errors that i have that's healing right but how do you what is your suggestion it seems like it seems like the errors are projected to the personality to the body so it's like it seems like the mistakes and the errors are are in the form but it's actually a perceptual error it's almost like if there was one clear lens where you could see everything perfectly clear and whole and one distorted fragmented lens that the fragmented lens is the error is the sin is the mistake and the holistic lens is the correction but it seems to be projected onto form and that's part of ego's trick because sins are always connected to bodies because that's the link and i was just here reading my lesson recording it the other day and and the lesson was i am not a body i am free so you see where the innocence is going to come is it's going to come through spiritual vision it's not going to come through through bodies so that's part of the the loosening of the identification and for me the way it's worked is is is letting the body be used as a communication device so for many some have to take more of the meditated route which is still in the mind and some may have like tai chi and they have movement meditations and yoga there's many different routes coming to the same experience but for me mine was kind of listened follow like okay if the body's meant as a communication device then use it use me kind of like this was the prayer and then that put me into a reliance on guidance because again the words are not chosen by a person it's showing up and just saying use me use me use me put the words in my mouth speak for me go before me you know that that's the prayer of the heart and then then the body just gets used in that way and used in that way countless opportunities and again it's not just the words it's you you smile you laugh smile and laughter is more universal symbols than words because words have all the languages we don't need interpreters smiles and hugs and laughter you know that that's part of it too music has been huge for me music has been instilling my mind i just have opened up to the spirit and say bring in bring in the music and even though i i penned this thing called movie watchers guide to enlightenment i i still feel we all are going to be part of the music lovers guide to enlightenment than that it's so experiential you can just dip into it and dive into it so beautifully