 God only gives. So isn't that wonderful that we have a creator that is just a pure giver? It's easy to love a giver because giving simply radiates and radiates love and light always that's, that is the essence. And if we use the word happiness, you know, Jesus tells us in a course of miracles, God's will for you is perfect happiness. So it must be that this state of pure giving is the happiest state of mind. It is an eternal state of mind. And that's why we're working on forgiveness so we can wake up to eternity because eternity is what heaven is. It's just pure happiness. Now, in order to experience happiness with regard to perception, then that takes a lot of cleaning of your mind, a lot of forgiving, a lot of clearing away, releasing attack thoughts, releasing grievances, releasing opinions. You have to really let it all go in terms of the contents of consciousness in order to come into this happiness and joy. But what a great theme you voted at number one, living in the giving, give like God gives. Number two, seeing beyond the tricks of the ego. So I'm gonna show two movies. One will be coming up from the chosen and that will be an episode from the chosen. It's the first season, episode three. And then the second movie I'm going to show is Awake, which is the life of Paramahansa Yogananda. And I think probably in the second movie, as we move along today, we'll get more into seeing beyond the tricks of the ego because we'll see specifically in that movie that Paramahansa Yogananda is going to have to face some challenges, trials, tribulations, and he's going to have to pray and release the tricks of the ego, but we'll look closely at those. The third one is willingness to be transparent in all situations. So it's like you have this light in your mind and you just have to be willing to shine it in all situations. You can't shine your light in some situations and hide your light in some situations and expect to know that you're the light. If you hide it sometimes, it must mean that you believe there are certain situations that you are unworthy to be the light or certain situations where you have to tone it down. Years ago, my friend Lisa Fair, she called me on the phone and she said, David, I went to a Course in Miracles group and they told me to tone down my joy. And I said, well, that's not coming from God. If that's what's going on in your Course in Miracles group, maybe you need to leave the group because if the facilitator's got you toning down your joy, that is not really the direction we're moving and we're going into fully experiencing and expressing our joy. So the fourth one is letting go of the intellect to embrace the presence of God. And that means that even things that you seem to grasp intellectually will be consumed or will be burned away in the light of love. So the state of mind of the kingdom of heaven is not an intellectual state. The intellect is something that the Holy Spirit can use as part of letting go of everything you think you think and think you know. So I would say the Holy Spirit uses the intellect to release the intellect. When you come into the presence of God, the stillness, the I amness, there is no sense of intellect anymore because intellect is just learning and the presence of God is beyond the sphere of learning. So you simply have to unlearn everything you think you learned. You have to let go of everything you think you know. And then when you're really clueless, when you're absolutely completely clueless, then you get a smile on your face and you go, aha. Nothing I believe meant anything at all. So it's a good laugh at the end, it's a good laugh. And finally opening up to authentically offer kindness. Kindness is only comes from a gentle heart. Kindness only comes from a state of non-judgment. Kindness only comes from the sweetness of a mind that has been purified of opinions and of judgments. So kindness is like a sweet fragrance that just emanates from your being as you are created by God. That's where kindness comes in. Now, those are some pretty strong themes. And so as I mentioned, the first, the first session we will go through today will be a little snippet from the parable of Jesus. We're gonna see a little snippet from Jesus. But this is a snippet you probably are not that familiar with because we're going to show a snippet from the year 26 AD. And that's a very interesting time, 26 AD. Jesus at this point has not called his apostles. He has not gone on his public ministry and he is just praying and living the simple life. He's got this simple life and it's just before his public ministry. So we're gonna see a beautiful little session just based on a little snippet from this time before Jesus has called his apostles. So when I was praying this morning, I was thinking, well, let's see, what are we really gonna talk about today? And what I see is that we all are in Jesus' shoes. Imagine yourself in 26 AD where you realize that you have a mission and that your mission is to align with God's will. And your mission is to be a perfect demonstration of God's will. And ultimately your mission is to remember God's will, to know God's will. And again, Jesus says, this is perfect happiness. So we're talking about that as your mission because you literally are in the same shoes that Jesus was in. You're in the same sandals today. You're here not to review a life that happened centuries ago, but you're here to learn lessons for your mind right now that help you come into perfect alignment with God's will for perfect happiness. And Jesus had me pick this particular episode of The Chosen For You. I remember the first time I saw it, I was just smiling from ear to ear because it really is just Jesus in the woods with a group of children. And that's gotta be one of the most fun experiences to be a little child with another group of little children friend, little boys and little girls in the woods together with Jesus. Talk about lighting your life up. And when I was praying to Jesus, I said, well, what are the lessons? And he said, well, there's so many lessons in this particular episode. Imagine that you've come to earth, so to speak. And now your purpose is to be the pure demonstration of the love of God. You're not here to teach anything in terms of concepts. You're just here to teach by your demonstration. You're here to be a presence, a presence that teaches eternal love in time and space. So that's a pretty big mission. You see how big of a mission that is. Imagine trying to teach eternity in time and space because time and space was made to deny eternity that now you're here as the demonstration. So your attitude, your gentleness, your softness, your sweetness, your kindness, your blissful state of mind is going to be the demonstration of eternity in time and space. Using time and space, you are going to so surrender to the will of God to line up your mind with the Holy Spirit, to line up with Jesus in such a way that you are the living demonstration of eternity. That really is saying something to be the living demonstration of eternity. Actually, Jesus and the angels don't care if you achieve anything in the world. They're not really interested at what you learn in the world because of course they know that you can't. You can't really learn anything in this realm that has any meaning because the realm was made by the ego. So the realm of time and space was made by false learning, false belief, I'll call it. And now you have to so empty your mind, empty the contents of consciousness of all belief. So there's a couple of things that Jesus wanted me to talk about today and one of them was faith. And basically he was telling me that faith is the power of your mind and your faith is always very, very strong because God created you with enormous faith. However, when you have a split mind, your faith is split between the right mind and the wrong mind. So you see, you're taking something that's extremely powerful and you're dividing it, you're dividing your attention between the right mind and the wrong mind. This is ultimately what Jesus meant by no man can serve two masters. He was basically not talking about God and money in terms of the world. He was just saying in terms of purpose, you can't serve the Holy spirit and the ego. You have to pick one or the other. So it's like in Ghostbusters, who are you gonna call? Who are you gonna call on? Are you gonna call on the Holy spirit or are you gonna call on the ego? Because faith and belief combine to make the cosmos. In other words, in heaven, there are no beliefs. There are no beliefs in heaven. The ego was the first beliefs. And when you have faith in the ego, it starts a big bang, a seemingly big bang of time and space with such an emotion, a totally fictitious projection. It's totally fictitious and nothing in the realm of belief is real. Nothing in the realm of belief is true. Jesus tells us in a course of miracles out of all the beliefs you have, and they're all generated from the ego. And the entire cosmos is a reflection of that. That forgiveness is the only belief that leads you out of all the rest. So there's only one belief in the mind that is valuable. Trillions and trillions and trillions of false beliefs and one belief that leads you back to eternity. A needle in a haystack. Today, we're going digging into the haystack. All of us together are going down on our hands and knees and we're jumping into the hay to find the needle. And Jesus is like, it's in there. Oh, believe me, it's in there. I know. I found it. He said, I found it. So he's wanting us to find it too. And he wants us to use this movie session today to find the needle in the haystack. So faith and belief combine to produce the projected world. But if you put your faith in forgiveness, which is the one belief that leads away from all the rest, then that faith in forgiveness, guided by the Holy Spirit will lead you to eternity. And that's what we're looking for. Last week, I showed a movie and I did a lot of talking about the peace pilgrim. And peace pilgrim, her one goal was self-realization. The one goal for Jesus, the self-realization. The one goal for Paramahansa Yogananda is self-realization. And so guess what our goal is too. That's right, Patricia. Self-realization. The one goal is to know thyself. The ancient Greeks put it that way. They said, know thyself. In a course of miracles, Jesus says, the goal of the curriculum, no matter what the teacher you choose is know thyself, there is nothing else. Isn't that sweet? Oh, Jesus, give it to us straight. Give it to us straight. We love to hear the straight answers that you provide, the straight instructions, straight directions. Now, just imagine again, put yourself in Jesus's sandals in 26 AD where he's basically been praying and praying and praying. And he went through his stage of growing up as a human being in Galilee. And he definitely worked as a carpenter. So his trade, you might say, when he was a teenager and in his early 20s was, he was a carpenter. So he had a vocation. I can see many of you, many of us have had vocations. We probably have had many seeming vocations in terms of the world. Some of us haven't had many, wonderful. If you haven't had many vocations, that's great too. Because ultimately our vocation is healing, healing in the mind. And that's why we're here now. We're finally coming into our true vocation which is healing in mind and waking up from the dream of time and space. Now, Jesus, in this episode, we're going to watch today is, he has some carpentry skills. He's still using a little bit. And basically the scene today we will see opens up with, it's basically Jesus camping. You know, I don't know about you, but I was in a Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and I actually, I liked camping. Is anybody here like camping? Being out in nature, isn't that fun? Well, this is Jesus camping. He's basically camping before he's going on his public mission. And he's going to have a little girl named Abigail who's going to discover his campsites. And she's going to try to hide because she doesn't want Jesus to see that she's watching him. But she's going to go back to her family and then she's going to start to bring some of her friends, her little friend of hers that's a boy. And then eventually she'll bring actually several other children to come and see the man by the edge of the woods who's camping. So this is not your common scene from movies you've seen about Jesus. This is Jesus prior to going on his public ministry. What I think is so valuable about what we're going to watch today is that it is a reminder that everything is always about the presence of love. It's about the kindness, it's about the generalness. It's about letting the Holy Spirit speak through you in a way that it can bring a blessing. So Jesus will be interacting with children and it will turn into a beautiful little teaching learning situation. How does that apply to our lives? Well, I've been blessed over the years to meet many amazing brothers and sisters and many of them are what the world would call teachers or spiritual teachers. But I would say that if you can't teach the essence of who you are to children, you're not ready to teach it to adults. In other words, if you can't teach the core of what's in you and extend the love and light to children, little children, then I think it's better to just put the teaching on hold in terms of form at least, because we're always teaching according to what's in our state of mind. But the children are the soft and gentle way to build confidence. I know myself, I've been lived in spiritual communities and I've been around the world many times. And I think probably some of the most enjoyable moments was when I was just left alone with the children and our joyful interactions. It's like you get a lot of glee going there when you have a lot of children because they really are interested in playing. They want to play. And I like to play too. I enjoy the playful spirit of being in the joy of the moment and releasing everything else. So I've done very well with children because I can certainly relate to them. We just look into each other's eyes and we laugh. We just laugh and laugh and laugh because there's a recognition there. So this first thing that we're going to watch, we're going to see Jesus even though he is teaching the whole cosmos divine love. Even though he's radiating God's presence to the whole cosmos, we're going to see it in terms of an interaction by the side of the woods with Jesus and this small group of children. This is definitely not, nothing is preplanned in this. There's definitely nothing intellectual about this and it's very, very spontaneous. You're going to get to see Jesus. You're going to get to see the humor of Jesus, the playfulness of Jesus. And yet he's there in the woods basically to pray. He's just praying and praying and praying all the time. He is living in a state of prayer. He's just in a state of prayer and communion with God. And what's so beautiful about that is he's still doing the things that you seem to do when you have a campsite. You have a little fireplace. You collect some wood. You have a little place for your tent and where you will sleep during the night. You have a little simple environment that you are using in a temporary way as a campsite. And I think that's a beautiful metaphor for how our experience goes in the world. We're not supposed to invest in anything of this world as if it has any value of itself. For some of you that are doing the workbook lessons, you know we've come upon, I will not value what is valueless. And basically when you're at a campsite, you basically organize and use the campsite as a backdrop for your devotional prayerful life, extreme simplicity. And then you kind of tidy up your campsite and you leave it in good condition for whoever comes and whoever's next coming to the campsite, you see? It's very temporary. When you're camping, you're not thinking, I'm going to live here for decades. That's not usually the thought in your mind. When you're camping, you're just enjoying nature. You're enjoying the simplicity. You're enjoying the presence. And I really actually, I always have enjoyed camping as well. I like to take hikes in the woods. I like to just sit at night and lay and look up at the stars. I like to watch the moon sometimes shimmering through the blowing leaves and just sitting there in the stillness of the night and looking up through the trees at the shimmering moonlight. To me, there's something very simple about camping. It's not like it's dramatic. It's not like it's controversial. It doesn't seem to involve much of society. When you think of camping, you're not thinking of society. You're thinking of being in harmony with nature and in harmony with everything that is. And here we have Jesus simply out there in the woods, in harmony with God and with everything and everyone. And he's just getting close to beginning to start his public ministry of three years. But the Holy Spirit is bringing these little children to Jesus. So they're like, this is like the warm-up act for Jesus' mission on earth. He's sending in the kids. And why is that a good thing? Well, first of all, kids are curious. Children are very curious. They have a lot of questions and believe me, these little children have a lot of questions for Jesus. Because why? Because they have parents. Because they have a rabbi at the synagogue. Because they live in a country that is occupied by the Romans and they're aware of things like drama, criminals, crime, murderers. These are children that are aware of what's going on in their world. They also have their rabbi, their local rabbi and they have the mom and dad. And they are trying to make sense and trying to grasp for meaning in their little lives. And actually these children have heard from the rabbi and their parents. So they know of scripture. These are not just kids that are playing all day with Barbie and Ken, because there was no Barbie and Ken. They make up their own little dolls back then in 26 AD. There's no Legos. There's no Tonka toys. There's no G.I. Joe. The toys are very, very simple. But they're still playing with the toys trying to figure out what is this whole time and space thing about. They have the same questions that children have today. The children of all the generations have wondered, how did I get here and what is this wacky world that I have to deal with on a daily basis with authority figures, with rules, with regulations, with having to be obedient, but feeling rebellious at times. And here we have the beautiful teaching learning situation of these wonderful little sparkly children coming together with Jesus. And Jesus is going to teach them about true giving. Jesus will teach them about their purpose in life. Jesus will teach them about his purpose in life, which he shares with them. And really he shares with all of us. So as we go through the first session here, the first segment of the day's session, I just want you to keep an eye on what's your mind and watch everything that you see based on the idea that as Jesus had, you have a mission to be the perfect demonstration of eternal life. You're not here really to learn anything in time and space. For those of you that never seem to learn much and you call yourself a slow learner, be glad, rejoice. You have to unlearn it anyway. For those of you that feel that you never achieved great things in this world, be glad, rejoice. You were never meant to achieve great things in this world. For those of you that feel like you haven't lived up to your parents' expectation, be glad, rejoice. Because you will have to unlearn your parents and all expectations anyway. So you might as well do it now because that's part of your global, your mission, your, I'll call it your cosmic mission is to be the will of God, is to know the will of God, is to be the perfect demonstration of God's love. Imagine living a life where you never, ever, ever frowned again. You never frowned on anyone or anything. Imagine living a life like my friend Dorothy where your cheeks start to get rosy red like they're painted on there. My friends Dorothy's cheeks, they looked like they were painted there because she was always so happy and so gleeful and her cheeks were rosy. They had red, like a reddish color. And it didn't go away. Tell you the truth. I mean, I knew Dorothy for some years and we had some beautiful interactions but I cannot remember one time where that woman frowned ever. Not even a frown. I never saw Dorothy get angry. We were both very telepathic. So we were kind of in, we were the same mind but she was, she never even frowned. And that's part of knowing God's will. God's will is for perfect happiness. That is transcending the laws of the ego, the laws of time and space. Now, after we go through our little romp in the woods with Jesus, I think you'll be feeling very relaxed at that point, very, very calm, very comfortable, a little more confident in your mission after spending a little time in the woods with Jesus and the children. I think you're gonna feel really, really good. Then we're gonna move into the movie Awake which is the life of Paramahansa Yogananda. So we're gonna shift into bringing more of the Eastern tradition, Kriya Yoga. We're going to, Don, we're gonna move into your territory. Don's in there. He said, yeah, yeah, we're going Jesus and then we're going to Paramahansa Yogananda. And we're going to see that Paramahansa Yogananda has these experiences of light even when he's in the womb of his mother, he has experiences of light. For most of us, we don't usually have that recollection. It's not usually on our resume. Flashes of light in my mother's womb. We are like, wow, I wish. I wish I had flashes of divine light in my mother's womb. Wow, that takes a lot of memory to go back that far too. Most of us are like, oh, please don't ask me, don't ask me to remember that part. But we're gonna see that he goes through the tricks of the ego because when Paramahansa is only 11 years old, I believe he's 11 when his mother dies suddenly, and then he has to go through experiences of having visions of his guru, seeing many visions of his guru and then one day actually being prompted to turn back, turn his head to the side and actually meeting the guru that was in his visions for many years. And then for about 10 years, he undergoes a radical undoing of the ego in the guru student relationship. He's basically just living with the guru and he's going through a very intense, radical unwinding of the ego. And then he will open a school to teach how to live. Isn't that beautiful? After you go through this great clearing of your mind that right away he goes on to teach children. And so Jesus with the children, we'll see Paramahansa Yogananda with the children as well. And that's just the beginning of the movie which will unveil many of the tricks of the ego that have to be surmounted. Many challenges, but basically you can see that Yogananda like Jesus, his goal is self-realization. So he will be able to handle whatever challenges the ego throws at him because that's what you have to do. You have to be able to expose and release all the challenges that the ego would throw at your sleeping mind. And so I think today's little movie of Jesus in the woods will say and then Paramahansa Yogananda, his life will be ripe with many, many teaching learning opportunities for all of us because we're all the same one. There isn't really separate people. We all have the same mission to demonstrate eternal love. We all have to face the same trials and temptations of believing we're a person and going through all the struggles of identifying our mind with a person, with a personality and with an external world that seems to be external. That's all part of the awakening process. So I think you're gonna really enjoy it. In baseball, this is like a double header. If you went to the movie theater, this is like what they call a twin bill. Two for the price of one. And oh my, Jesus Christ and Paramahansa Yogananda, that's who you've got on the double bill today. That's right. The, they are excellent role models for what we're trying to discover that needle in the haystack in the mind. I would remind you again that this is purely an adventure for your mind. That even though it says 26 AD, there was no 26 AD. There was no past. There was no character called Jesus. There was no character called Paramahansa Yogananda. It's all us facing what we're facing right now in this moment because linear time is a trick. However, today we're going to use some examples that I would say are extremely helpful teaching learning examples in your spiritual awakening. These are examples that you'll see on the big screen in front of you. But more than that, I think you can start to feel the love in your heart while you're watching these shadow figures on the movie screen. Both Yogananda and Jesus were very, very, very aware that this was a world of shadows. Both of them were aware that they were not to become identified or actively engage in the shadows. That is a very rare calling, but it's our calling if we're going to wake up from the dream of time and space, we have to learn to not be distracted by the shadows, not be attracted to the shadows, not be repulsed by the shadows, not believe that we can control the shadows or be controlled by the shadows. You see how important it is? That's why we're watching the movie today because our experience has to be that we are one and we are dreaming and we are aware that we're dreaming and we cannot be touched by shadows. We are not interested in shadow land. If people say, what's gonna happen in the future? That's a shadow land question. If people say, did this really occur in the past? That's a shadow land question. Nothing actually ever occurred in the past nor will it occur in the future. You're right here with me right now to use today to see that you're the dreamer of the dream and you have no reason to be upset about anything because now is all that there is. So there is no reason ever to be upset. We only have a reason for happiness. We only have a reason for joy. We only have a reason to shout from the rooftops, glory to God, glory to God, glory to Almighty God. And we can see in our first session that Jesus is in that prayer. He is praying, praying, praying in the woods, praying, praying with God, praying, praying. That's his life. Now prayer is the meaning of miracles. And I would say that when you pray truly, you open your mind to receive guidance. But even that guidance is just a stepping stone to a silent mind, to a mind that is present, to a mind that is still, to a mind that is emptied of all ego beliefs and ego thoughts. That is the only purpose of prayer. We're not interested in the law of attraction. We're not interested in the law of manifestation. We're not interested in using the past to generate a different future. We're interested in seeing the dream is just a dream. This is not going to be a day where we discuss manifesting because there is no manifesting. Manifesting is an illusion. I said maybe last week, if you wanna do a workshop that's poorly attended, do one on the impossibility of manifesting. And then I said, if you wanna get zero people in your workshop, just do one on healing the pleasure. That will surely keep you there by yourself to face that thought. But this lesson today has nothing to do with trying to make the world a better place, but it's about seeing the shadows as shadows. And wow, thank you Jesus and Parma Hansa for being with us today and allowing your images to be used for such a holy purpose. So get ready to go to the campsite. We're going to visit 26 AD and the little Abigail and her family and Jesus in the woods.