 When we have guidelines like No People Pleasing, No Private Thoughts, Christian was reminding me today that once time I said, if you could totally get into practicing those two guidelines, you wouldn't even need the course. If you could fully practice No People Pleasing and No Private Thoughts, the unconscious mind would be up and out faster than you could even imagine. And yet people pleasing is kind of now become a cliche that even when you show up for mind training and you need a lot of mind training, a whole lot of mind training, and there are those there that are there to join with you and offer projects and instructions just designed to do that mind training that people will be like, well, I don't want to people please carry or I don't want to people please David and the messengers and everything. And that's a common ego defense against the very mind training that is needed. When the mind is deceived and the mind is asleep, it is more than addicted to people pleasing. It is a way of life for the deceived mind. In fact, the ego made up the whole cosmos. It literally peopled the world. Jesus uses that phrase, peopled the world meaning the ego peopled the world. God didn't create the people. God is no respecter of persons. The Bible says God is pure spirit. God doesn't even know about this world. God has nothing to do with the people. Personalities, persona, mask. God is not a creator of masks. In God all things are known. Everything is revealed openly. There's no secrets. There's no hiding. There's no mask. There's no persons. There's no personalities. This world is completely unlike the kingdom of heaven. There's nothing a part of this world that has anything to do with the kingdom of heaven. Nothing. Even the unified field that the quantum physicists talk about where it's all connected and all energy, the happy dream, the forgiven world, Jesus tells us that too is an illusion. That's still part of the veil. It has nothing to do with God at all. God has nothing to do with any of it. So be passers by, as it says in the Gospel of Thomas, means we have to forgive and release everything about this world to know God. God knows not form, the Course teaches. So if you're going to know God and God knows not form, put those together. You need revelation to know God. Now what you're describing is that's the uneasiness, the sense of conflict there. Because when you are put in what is called a leadership position, that's just a temporary symbol that the Holy Spirit will use to speak through and to lead through and guide through, only that you can let the Spirit do it through you. And the ego is always a little frightened of that because it's being undone through that process. Even the I need do nothing section of the Course, he says just have complete loyalty and do this one thing for me and say and mean I need do nothing as a form of allegiance. That's so deep. It's like what? People look at that and they go, what's he talking about? I need do nothing. What the whole Course is about? Doing lessons and what's he talking about? He even says from this place of stillness you'll be led on many busy doings. So he's showing you that there's going to be lots of being done through before you have this experience that I need do nothing. I don't have any shoulds or out tos and half tos left. So you're just giving way to a process of like cleansing your mind, washing your mind of being used by the Holy Spirit. And in the state of unified awareness, there's no sense of doing or even being done through at that point. That all vanishes. There's no sense that doing has no meaning in the unified field. Nothing's done in the unified field. It's just pure unified awareness and energy. And that's what you're being lifted up and taken to. And these are just mechanisms where we have a lot of people who come here and they really get it that the first step is trust and follow. And even though they may have ego resistance to trust and follow, there's something in their mind that knows, wow, this is the first step in my escape from hell, my perception of the world. And then as they get into trust and follow, trust and follow, there comes a certain point where the Spirit will say, very good, you're doing really well with that one. Now we're going to kick it up a notch. Now I'll see if you can lead and follow. Because if you identify personally with leader role and you think you yourself are leading, oh, it's going to be a rough ride. But if you're being led, if you're leading through listening, like it says in the Course, the messenger is just the one who delivers the message. But the messages are for the messenger. He's giving beautiful metaphors in the Course. Really, it's all for your mind. It's not really teacher, student, leader, follower. It's just all mechanisms. But let's say you come in and you go trust, follow, trust, follow, trust, follow, then you reach a certain point and then you're given another instruction, now follow lead, follow lead, follow lead, follow lead. Ultimately, the only way you will find peace in either of those is to let go of control. Of thinking that you are voluntarily in charge of the following or the leading. Because it's only the ego, the personality self that believes that it's somehow in charge of something. And then at some point you start to realize what Jesus says, miracles are involuntary. Oh my gosh, involuntary. Oh my gosh, that is going to open up the gateway to peace of mind. Because that sense of control, you know, miracles, he says, should not be under conscious control. There is one, Jesus says, I'm in the charge of the planet of the Atonement. I inspire miracles. I can do them through you. He doesn't ever say that you personally are in charge of miracles or that you can even direct and choose where they should be bestowed. That was one of my biggest lessons. When I started to get into all the miracles, I started to think, my mother really needs a miracle. And, oh man, was I in for a difficult time with that one. In fact, I even went to her and would just be sharing the ideas. And she said at one point, you need to find other people to share these ideas with. And Jesus said, did you hear that? That was me speaking through mom. That was exactly it. I had to open up my parameters and let Jesus, the Holy Spirit, tell me where to bestow the miracles. That was another step in I will step back and let him leave the way. That was just another step in humble following of letting go of thinking that I knew anything about who needed what. Miracles are involuntary and should not be under conscious control. You see, that's going to take a lot of mind training to experience that state of mind. And when people are coming in from a state of deception and they say things like, well, I don't want people please carry. Well, the whole point of coming here is because they're just draped in people pleasing. As if they could tell when they're doing it and when they're not doing it. It's such a deep thing that they're people pleasing almost all the time. And I don't hesitate to say that. It's so deeply ingrained. They've believed in this mask and they're so shaky about this mask that they really think it's important to be liked and to be liked by other people and know the right people. And all those things that Jesus talks about in lesson 50, I am sustained by the love of God, being liked, knowing the right people. He doesn't call it people pleasing, but the sleeping mind is draped in that. It's just a way of life for that. And it doesn't even suspect that it's absolute craziness and nonsense. It actually thinks that it's doing real helpful things when it's just people pleasing, people pleasing, and people pleasing, and more people pleasing. And it needs to be gently shaken out, usually through contrast experiences. So this I-know-mind that's just so locked into people pleasing with everything and everyone needs to have a few little charges and jolts to start to realize how pervasive is the problem. So that's why I started out last night and said that when I had a group of students back in the early 1990s, we would just come together and I would just say, does anybody think they know something? And we would go immediately into the I-know-mind and start to let the spirit softly show us that we didn't. We didn't know anything.