 Well, comparison is a major ego device for maintaining separation, and it's like, separation is just a belief, but it's hidden under a projected hierarchy of illusions, which is what preferences are, which is what favoring some over others or being more drawn to some and less drawn to others and so on and so forth. It's all part of a giant smoke screen that kind of is like a giant cobweb that can keep the spider hidden, like a massive cobweb so that it's so destructive and becomes so addictive and becomes so accepted and so natural that it's not questioned. In fact, that's the whole point of the world is to become so familiarized and so accepted that it's never questioned. Some of you saw the Matrix movie and Agent Smith, who was kind of an agent, an ego character, but he was saying that people accept the world with which they're presented, kind of talking about the human condition, like they're all suckers for whatever seems to be presented. What they perceive is what they believe and that's true. Actually that was one of the truisms that Agent Smith spoke, that you accept the world with which you're presented, when really what we're being taught now is we have to question everything about not only the world with which we're presented, but also the belief system underneath that world that made the world, because that belief system and the world are the same. They're the same cobweb and the ego belief is like hiding underneath it. So it's quite an intricate cobweb and it's a cobweb of comparisons. So first question is kind of like what do we do about these comparisons? Well, it's an addictive form of believing and thinking so addictive that all education in this world is based on comparison. All education. It doesn't matter what discipline you go into, it's all based on comparison. You might say that maybe quantum physics, you know, once it starts to get down below or lower beneath the molecular level, beneath the atomic level, and then underneath we'll say the subatomic level, there's this hint that everything is perfectly connected, everything is energy, everything is joined, and in that, that's kind of like theorized about. The quantum physicists will theorize, but that connectedness has no comparison because it's completely unified, it's unified awareness, it's pure energy, but everything else that we would say is studied in this world. All the disciplines, when you go to school or preschool, junior school, high school, college, graduate school, all of the disciplines, we could say the one thing that they have in common is they all are based on a curriculum of comparison. It's impossible to think of any of these disciplines without comparison. It's just the bedrock. And so once you go deep enough and you start to realize, wow, comparison is just part of the status quo, that's just a given, that's just accepted. Here people say, are we really capable of comparing? You'll never hear that on a commentary show, on a game show, on whatever, because it's already a game show, the news broadcast, the scientific discovery show, the whatever is being presented is already based on comparisons. And so in A Course in Miracles, Jesus says comparison must be an ego device for love makes none. Why can't I feel the love, why can't I feel the love and the connectedness, the connectivity is because comparison is a defense mechanism that was made, that love would never be experienced. It was made as such a deeply complex system, such an all-pervasive system. In fact in the Matrix, you know, Morpheus says the Matrix is all around you. Everything that you perceive he's basically saying to Neo is the Matrix and you could say the same about the world of comparisons. Everything that's part of perception is there and held in place, almost like the glue that holds the cobweb in place is the comparison. So you have to have an experience or even just a glimpse of an experience that transcends comparison. And most of the times when people talk about a very profound spiritual experience or a mystical experience they'll call it, it's a state of no judgment, pure total acceptance. There's just no duality to it, that's why there's no comparison because there's only nothing to compare, all knowing this is called described in many ways. There are symbols for it, I mean on the way here Francis and I took off and we started off in Camus and we came down, they had blizzards going on and up 12, 18 inches of snow just north of Salt Lake City and so on and so forth. So when we came here today we actually came through some passageways where it just got more white and more white and more white to the point that you couldn't tell the difference between the horizon and the mountains or the fields or the highway or anything, it just, you called it Antarctica, are we in Antarctica, it felt like we just drove right into the middle of Antarctica because it just got whiter and whiter and whiter and whiter and all distinctions faded in that whiteness. There was some slight gradations, some little slight like light grays and bright whites and then all of a sudden it just got white, white, thick white, like everything was, the air was white and it was just kind of interesting driving, it was like, it was like moving into abstraction because there was, there were no familiar lines anywhere and having had some revelatory experiences, that's similar to the experience I had where the three-dimensionality of the world collapsed and this light started streaming through then the world just disappeared and there wasn't any vestige of a world left, there was no gradations, it was just all pure light, just everything was light, there was no subject and object in it, it was just pure white light, everything and that we could equate with love, that's what the love is and so in A Course in Miracles again Jesus says, if you attain the faintest glimmering of what love means today, you have advanced in distance without measure and in time beyond the count of years, you might say every moment of every day in your life is all an openness and a readiness and a willingness to have the faintest glimmering of what love means today, you know it's like that's your prayer in your heart, you know instead of like the old movie that famous saying show me the money, it's like show me the love is really a call, a prayer in your heart to have the faintest glimmering of what that really means because love even in this world, the word love is used in many different contexts and everything from romantic love to bumper stickers, I love my Volvo, I love the New York Yankees, I love the bumper stickers, just put the I heart and you know you can throw whatever you want at the end of it but that's all just attachment, there aren't any Yankees in heaven, there aren't any Volvos in heaven, it's just I heart, you know even that merges together, you can stick with either one, the I is the all pervasive I am or the heart is the heart of it all and so you know that's really what we're going for and initially when you start to even open up to that idea of opening to that love, first you can feel all the ego objections in your own mind or maybe even if you would even speak such an idea to friends, family, relatives, colleagues or whatever, oh right like you're going to discover what love is, what are we talking about like unconditional love, agape love, you know this and this, you and how many others have attempted to even find that but actually there has to be a point where you sincerely in your heart say yes that is the meaning of my life while I believe I have a life that's apart from it all, the purpose of that life has to be the remembrance of that love that I am, you know that is the meaning of life, you know even though we know is Monty Python and all the hilarious attempts at looking at the craziness of searching for the meaning of life and in the end we do have to end the search, you know it's not we can't forever be seekers, we have to be a finder at some point, you know the search must end in an actual experience and so that's what you could say you can consciously devote yourself over to and then as we start to look at that and you read things like this course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love for that is far beyond what can be taught, it does aim at removing the obstacles to the awareness of love's presence then you start to see that it's not like you can just affirm your way into heaven it's not so easy it's just like with Popeye I am that I am and that's all that I am it's not just so easy as to say the words there actually has to be a transformation that occurs a complete transformation from what I believed seemingly formerly believed to an experience that transcends all belief and that's what you give your heart over to that's what we're here for when I talked initially about the little snubs you know as you do attempt to sink into meditation as you give yourself this quiet time out here there's not necessarily a lot of distractions out here in form this isn't like an amusement park or whatever it's a snowy cold canyon and yet you do get to watch your mind you know what it's trying to generate what is what gyrations it goes through you do get a better awareness of what's actually going on in consciousness and then you do have a better awareness of what you're going to really deal with and face you and with a trust that you you have strength within you you have the presence and the guidance and the love within you that will carry you into that experience so that's really what it's about that's what we call forgiveness is is letting everything up and it's it's pretty much a you could say it's a it's a daily practice it's a moment by moment practice so you you desire that experience of love and we might say just by desiring that by desiring that you're calling that forth you're calling that into awareness and anything that's unlike that experience of love will come up into awareness for forgiveness so that's how it works.