 Within the relative world of time and space I would say for the vast, vast, vast, or I can say for most whole people that direct experience with God is extremely, extremely rare. I was even sharing last night that someone like Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa won the Nobel Prize. She's like an icon. People think of spiritual devotion and Mother Teresa, for many people, she just springs to mind like an icon. And then after she passed, you know, her confessions came out where she had talked to all the priests over the many years, over decades, and they actually published the confessions of the priests. And people were shocked that she really only had one period of maybe seven to eight months back in the late 1950s where she had that experience of oneness with Jesus and oneness with God. Out of all those decades, there was just this one period of seven or eight months where she really was in it. Without a glimpse, there were glimmers here and there. But as far as consistently being a direct experience with God, it was a small part of her life. It was the minority of her life even though she was an icon. Now, if that was Mother Teresa, you know, that kind of puts a perspective on how rare this direct experience is. You know, it's, in fact, in A Course in Miracles it says, direct experience with God, indirect experience with God, the body would not be long maintained. This blazing light, you know, and even the need for a body would not be long maintained. There's one line in the Course too, I think it's back in the teacher's manual that I like to quote every once in a while where he's talking about like the saints. And he says, there are those who have laid their body aside in order to increase their helpfulness. They have laid their body aside in order to increase their helpfulness. Now, you read something like that and you go, whoa, maybe I've got this whole world backwards and upside down. I kind of think that it might be helpful to have a body to go, you know, spread the good word and spread good cheer over the world and, you know, do all this and this. And he's saying, no, there are those saints really that have laid the body aside in order to increase their helpfulness, implying that you're more helpful to the plan, invisible, than you are what the ego calls visible. That's humiliating for the ego. For all the spiritual seekers of the world it's like, oh, come on. You mean I'm more helpful, invisible than I am? Manifest as a body? That's insulting to the ego, you know. It's like, oh, come on. But really everything about this world is backwards and upside down. Even with the Course in Miracles, the scribe Helen Schuchman, who had a pretty high revelation readiness, you know, revelation being direct experience with God. She was pretty high. Also had enormous resistance, huge projections, a lot of anger. And then there was Bill who actually we learned did not have a revelation readiness, a high revelation readiness. And you know out of the two which one seemed to really come closer to the more sustained, miraculous experience. It was actually Bill. It was the one who didn't have the revelation readiness that ended up at the end of his life more consistently peaceful. He was like floating around, like dancing like Fred Astaire, you know. He was by the end of his life because he practiced, he was so into practice and devotion, you know. Even without that direct experience of God, he had the devotion and the practice to practice the Course in Miracles. He would often show up at Course in Miracles groups in the later years of his life. And people would notice there was this guy, this tall guy that was there at these Course groups, who hardly ever spoke but was the happiest. He just felt such peace and presence of him just sitting in the room because, oh, was he practicing. When he retired from psychology, oh, did he practice. He really went with it. That's a great example for all of us. Even if you haven't had direct experience of God, that shows you what the practice can do. The spiritual journey is 1% principle and 99% practice. I went through a phase when I was in university where I started to open up. I just was open-minded. I read a lot of philosophies, a lot of religions. I just went more and more and more. And just when I thought I was getting somewhere, you know, I didn't have a lot of these direct experiences with God, but I was certainly well read on religion. I could really tell you about, you know, Buddhism and Hinduism and all these Zoroastrianism and all these things. Well, at one point the spirit, like, spoke to me. It said, come on now, pick your path and go deep. And I was like, oh, I thought I was doing real well knowing about all these religions. I thought I was quite open-minded, actually. And then it was like, pick your path and go deep. In other words, it was like practice. If you find a pathway that really resonates with your heart and you feel real drawn and attracted to it and really like it's got you in the tractor beam, take that path and practice it all the way. Go all the way with it. Don't try to make some kind of synthetic religion that's got a little bit of everything in it, you know, because you're not going to go deep with your synthesis. Practice. Take anything. Take, if you like, staring at leaves, you know, and like take it all the way, you know, make that your religion. What's your religion? I stare at leaves. You know, that's it. It's just as good as any of the rest, you know. I bet you could come into some real mystical experiences if you really went all the way with just staring at leaves. But that was the thing for me. It was like, just pick your path and really go with it. Now, I also feel like for a lot of us, you know, it seems like we kind of back into our spiritual path. You know, I felt that's what happened with the course. I didn't find it. It's more like it found me and it swallowed me up whole. I was like, what happened? It was Jaws. The big teeth had clamped down and I'm like, okay, I don't feel like I had a lot of choice in that matter, but I guess the course and miracles is my path. And I could feel it, you know, so I said. So then I thought, okay, I'm like in the Jaws, I'm like, all right, Jonah in the whale. Okay, all right, all right. It's the course of miracles, okay. That's the end of all that stack of books and everything I was doing before. I've got my path now. And then the next thing I got was, oh, I don't have any excuses now. I've been told pick your path and go deep. And the path has been delivered. So I better, as my friend Jennifer says, get her done. I better get her done. I better immerse because this is it. I can't keep saying God. I don't have a path yet or I haven't found my path yet. I couldn't throw out any excuses. It was like practice. So then I was into the 99% practice. At the beginning, I was very much like you in the sense that I did not grow up with the childhood of a lot of mystical experiences. I didn't have any mystical experiences. I didn't have any lotus petals coming under my feet when I was walking along like Buddha or Siddhartha or with Jesus, you know, these things. I wasn't in the, believe me, at 12 years old, I was in the temple. I was in the United Church of Christ. And if I'd start talking like he did, and I'd have got a good crack across the mouth, like what are you doing in here? Who do you think you are? I did not have a mystical childhood. I did not have a mystical teenage time. I was not a mystical adolescent. I had some wonderful feelings of joy and belief and happiness. And then when I got into my 20s, I really didn't have any mystical experiences there. And then just when it started to come close to A Course in Miracles, which is more of my late 20s, then I started to have more kind of mystical experiences or feeling at one with things and this and that. But mine was more the path of, I got little nudges, little nudges in my heart. And I'm sure you get those little nudges a lot too. You know, I was grateful. I didn't have a direct experience of God, but I was getting nudges. And then they turned more like into little tickles. I really started to get quite content in the practice. You know, there's a part in A Course in Miracles where Jesus says you may become depressed at thinking how long it will take to completely change your mind. In other words, to come to complete alignment with God. And he answers that with, when you think that, ask yourself one question, how long is an instant? Now that's optimism. That kind of a question given as an answer to that concern and depression is him saying, you know, it really only takes one instant. And that's important. When I was working with the Course and doing the workbook lessons, I had to keep that in my heart necessarily in there for 365. I was expecting to wake up. I was expecting the lesson I was doing to be the lesson. I was going to throw my whole heart and soul into my lesson of the day. And people would even ask me, other Course in Miracles students would say, they would look ahead in the book, in the workbook, and they would go, oh, you know what lesson 79 is, lesson 152? And that I've got my lesson of the day. I'm throwing all my eggs in that basket. I'm going 100% for whatever I was doing because that's where we have to focus our energy. And if you just focus on unconditional love, you really give yourself over to that. You keep giving yourself over to that. I really want to practice unconditional love. Then anything unlike that that's pushed out of awareness will come up. And that's your practice, to let it go. You're just really, you're focused on that unconditional love. It's like a glacier of light. It's going to force up any scrap of darkness that's still in there. Good! I just told the group the other day, Peace Pogam used to go along in her life and she'd say, every time I got out of alignment a problem would come along and slap me back on the path. I thought, what a great, pathway to God gets slapped back on to the path by problems. Instead of trying to solve them, she saw that the problem was an indication she was out of alignment. She just got knocked back on to the groove. And I love that. That's very simple. Instead of reacting to a problem and taking it on, you go, oops, thank you. Thank you. We'll be right back.