 My belief is that when Adam and Eve was in the garden, they were cloaked in light, but there wasn't a concept of time. And when you were talking, and then they entered into a time when time began in a physical reality, and they covered themselves with fig leaves. And it was almost as if, cosmically, the fig leaf came in and covered the cosmos covered in what you were talking about. But that occurred at that time. Is that close? Yeah, it's a great metaphor in the sense that the Genesis story says that there was a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So, by the way, there's your duality. There's your past and future, and there's your linear time. That's all that that tree was. So, of course, the miracles come along, and we had the Adam and Eve story, and people would say, I don't know if there was a literal Adam and Eve, but I think it was an attempt to explain what happened or something went wrong. And, of course, the miracles come along, and Jesus in there says, God would never put you in such a position. And that's a good thing to look at too, that if there was a tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and God was there, and the circuit was there, why would He put His beloved creations anywhere near that tree? You know, if God is all-loving and all-knowing. So, in the course, it's kind of a release of a nontological guilt in saying, you know, God didn't put you near that tree. You know, that tree is entirely of the ego it's making, and it's a lie. It's a lie about your true spiritual identity. And so, in one sense, you can leave God out of it. Don't get angry at God. It's just this error that you need to forgive or release about yourself and time. Really, it's about time is what it's about. So, linear time is that fig leaf, is that dependence against the holy instant? Since you're there in the garden. The book somewhere, I remember saying that, God put Adam... Jesus said, God put Adam asleep, and he never woke him. Somewhere in there, is it? Kind of like that. It does say that. There's something like that. I remember reading it. It says in the Bible, you know, it says, Adam fell asleep. And he never tells anywhere where he woke. It never says that he woke up. And while he was asleep, he took the river and made the water. You know, he put him to sleep to get the river and then make the water from the river. And maybe that was the ego of it. From the minute he did whatever happened, this was correct. I don't know, there's got to be a story there somewhere that relates to this. Well, I'll give you a fact that we know what the Adam Eve story is. But in the course, he gives you another little story. This doesn't involve men and women, though. And this story does not involve garden and snakes and whatever. He says, into eternity where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. That's his whole Genesis story. And the Course in Miracles is, in the end I say, you're going to have to give up that story, because what atonement is, or what correction is, atonement is the awareness that the separation never happened. That's what enlightenment is. Enlightenment isn't getting your mind to a place where you can reconcile truth and illusion, or you can reconcile fear. Atonement is getting to a place where you are absolved of the thought of fear, that you see that fear is not real. You know, perfect love, cast out fear. Or we were just in a group today saying, if you bring the problem together with the solution, the problem disappears. Just like if you bring darkness and light together, it's going to be light. Or if you go and you turn on a light switch, you know, it's like the darkness and the light don't battle it out to see what's going to happen when that light is on. There's no such thing as that. There's no such thing as that. When we get to that point, there's one little big step in there that God has to take for us, right? But don't say God takes the final step. Talk about that a little bit. But if you really read what Jesus says carefully, he says God will take the final step. But he says that step was taken in your creation. In other words, when the mind takes the final step, it's taken in terms of time. It's like somewhere along the line down there, God will take the final step. But the final step was creation. So in other words, the giving up of time returns the mind to a state of creative presence. Does he have to help you to give it up? Well, the Holy Spirit is the help. And that's just the presence in your mind that sees the illusion but remembers the truth. So you could say it's kind of like a bridge in your mind that sees the error but knows the error is not true and remembers the reality. Which is letting go of the illusion. Which is letting go of the illusion. So even in that sense, people will say, well, it sounds like a dual function for the Holy Spirit if he sees the error but knows the truth. And it's like, well, the part that sees the error is just a metaphor. That part, of course, goes too because how could a creation of God look upon error? So that's the metaphor in our mind of that presence. We were talking to Rayford and I were talking before the meeting last night about, he just says, I just go out there, I'm out among the animals and just tuning in and asking the Holy Spirit and he's talking to me and talking through me and this and that. That's that presence in here that's just like cleansing and washing the mind of the mirror. That's what I was reading the other day about the Holy Spirit and I'm not too clear on that. And is it the onion presence you think it is our God's health? Our higher God's health? Is that the Holy Spirit? It's kind of like some of us were raised in Christianity and they had this Trinity idea. Trinity, yes. Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and so forth. You might say God is the Prime Creator and God is the Creator of all. And then Christ is not Jesus the man because Christ is not a male or female and Christ is not something that walks in time. Christ is an internal. Right, an idea in the mind of God. So you might say that Christ is the effect. God is the Creator, Christ is the effect. Christ is the Son? Yeah, Christ is the Son of God. You could say God is the effect. That's what again, that's a word. The book says Son. I'm not saying any. No. You got it. God's creation... Even though it says Son, it just... I know what I wouldn't kind of say was male. Right. It's just a perfect creation. I thought they couldn't get over it. We won't even call it Son, we'll call it Christ. Christ is a name for universal love. Right, it doesn't have a male or female connotation. So you've got God and then Christ and then Christ was given creative ability so Christ has creations in their pure spirit as well. They're not animals and plants. Those are still part of the illusion of time and they're bound in the rules of time but so there's the prime Creator, the creation and then the creation creates too a continual line of creation almost like in form in the Bible. You go begat, begat, begat. Well, this is create, create, create. It's just a pure line of creation. For the mind that believes that separation is possible which is falling asleep and forgetting that creation it seems to need a helper because it seems to have circumscribed itself, its identity in this crazy idea, a mad idea of time and it seems to need a way out. So the Holy Spirit is, you might say a symbol or a reminder to that mind and there's no way really to understand the Holy Spirit in terms of the dual function because that would be again like how do you bring truth and illusion together and how do you even make a bridge but just think of it as this reminder in your mind that remembers your reality that's constantly telling you how beautiful and perfect and innocent you are no matter what seems to happen in time that presence is just pure love. I'm really aligning with the book where it says the Holy Spirit knows what God cannot know and also knows what we cannot understand. God knows everything. Right. It says that it, and it brings and the purpose is to bring those two back together. This is the problem, this is the solution and once we bring the problem to the solution and this job is to bring all of this that we're thinking, am I on the right track? You could say that the Holy Spirit knows what God cannot know in the sense that God is pure spirit so God doesn't know of time so a lot of that people go, oh boy. How can he know what doesn't exist? Right. So if he believed it, then it would be real. Exactly. If there was any awareness or recognition and on the flip side the ego the ego can't know love and can't know God and so that's where the bridge seems to be it seems to be the ego belief and the return of the awareness of God and Christ. So in practical terms that's that small still voice that's prompting you in every moment of every day calling you to return and guiding you. It's like I think of it more as just a steady guide that guide in there knows imagine you seem to be in a maze of time and space of duality and you know how mazes are they're quite complicated you know with lots of nooks and crannies and lots of different turns and that little small still voice it's a reminder in your mind that knows the way out is the spirit or the Holy Spirit that's just guiding you always. It's like the answer to the problem is right there it's within you and now the goal is to accept the answer and it can and must occur in an instant but it seems to when the mind is terrified of that answer it seems to take time even to open the mind to that answer it seems to it's the illusion of the process of enlightenment to the actual here and now of enlightenment which which is what enlightenment is it's a here and now experience I remember watching many years ago a videotape of Krishnamurti and he's this is 1972 he's up in San Diego and he's sitting up on the stage and his eyes are twinkling and sparkling looking around at all the audience and he's just absolute pure love little teeny Indian man with white hair he's just so excited and he's always got this glee on his face you know and he's like tonight we are going to look at fear go deeply and if you follow what I say step follow it with me we'll go down to a point where you'll be completely absolved of fear forever and he's absolutely serious he says not the fear of your wife not the fear of your husband and he talks about different things and he's talking about fear and I watched him in a I don't know how long the videotape was I was watching it at Kasko Mountains and he takes it step by step it's showing that by believing in the reality of the past and finding something desirable in the past the mind then wants to repeat that desirable event and he talks about the movement of time he's literally talking about time the time is the root of all error and he's describing how it works something you think you've experienced in the past and you want to repeat it like the Charlie Simons and anticipation he keeps me waiting so he goes through that whole thing and they keep showing during the video they'll give shots of the audience because he's going deeper and deeper rapidly zooming down in the mind to the original error and people are like looking around like this every five minutes he speaks there's more people that are just looking around like they don't have a clue of what he's even talking about and he stops every five minutes and he says don't take what the speaker says to be the truth he won't even refer don't take what the speaker says to be the truth look at it for yourself aren't you there with me and then he goes another five minutes and people are because the audience is just like what but he's so thorough he's so meticulous and so loving and so polite and so kind that he's like come into this experience together and then he reaches at the end he reaches the point where he shows the illusion of time and he goes did you get it did you get it did you get it if you got it wonderful if you didn't get it don't go home and think about it I'm just like oh my god I mean what a presence you know if you got it you got it if you got it in here or not if you followed it step by step don't try to even go home and think about it because it's not it when you're into thought of time going home and thinking about it as you're going doing your stuff that's not it that's not enlightenment so that's how precious this present moment is it's a state of recognition but all it takes really is willingness to just release the loop of time release the belief that there's something incomplete that is going to take time to complete as if it will take time to be who you are which is the ultimate this you know joke it's going to take time and of course the miracles I want to mention this one thing too is that in the Course in Miracles Jesus says the ego likes the idea of return to God return to God because it can make the idea seem extremely difficult and unworthy unworthy of God in the first place that you lost it you never lost it you can't lose what you are do you have the realization of no time I am living in the present in the sense that people who are around me they see that I just don't put attention to time in the sense of planning and so forth and even to come to this gathering there seems to be things that are required to set up and Kathy will go into prayer really and it's all very spontaneous you know someone comes in and sends in an invitation says come Arvind gets a CD in the mail and there's a little carpet and says oh, gathering is available okay yeah I'll take one of those I want one of those gatherings and so it seems to in time set in motion a chain of events where then Arvind writes and then back and forth in the communications and then so he sets in motion a trip for us to come from Cincinnati out here to Texas and then lots of other things start to fill in in between Indianapolis intensive is open up and St. Louis group of gatherings open up in Oklahoma just on the path to even come to answer this one ball from Arvind oh, all those others have started it starts with one simple invitation of course you have to have an invitation because I've got nowhere to go no one to convince and really nobody to talk to either since I'm just happy to just be still and all of a sudden a call comes in oh, Texas, okay and then all these other things have opened up and in fact then even when we were traveling here we got to Indianapolis the first city of this trip we got there and Rusty goes we're half an hour early and so we met this man we took a walk and he asked me don't you do anything worldwide and I said I don't even have a passport I don't even I mean there's nowhere to go and and he says well I was I said we did get an invitation from Argentina and he said Argentina I've been thinking that I was supposed to go to Argentina and so by the time we walk another 15 minutes it becomes apparent we're going to Argentina he's got frequent fire miles and the invitations come in and I cold kept it up on the cell phones I need a birth certificate and I passed one of those female jiggies passport David it's called a thing of a jiggie then they do they get in motion you know and that's where the thing and so literally within a couple days the thing is set up the plane tickets tickets are reserved passports it's like Rusty came back to Cincinnati that first well the second day and I looked for the date his birth certificate he didn't know where it was there was one that was like one that showed his proof of birth for school and he thought that was a birth certificate but oh this isn't a birth certificate so I called Jack and Evelyn his biological parents to see if they could find it so and you know Rusty was guided to come back so then I called them back that night when Rusty came back and they found it so we went over to their house to get the birth certificate and then Rusty went back to Indianapolis to meet David and then they went and got the pictures taken and everything for the passport yeah I had a holy camera at the post office and the woman was sharing I said do I need to do anything here like I'm going in March and this is already in the middle of January I have no passport and I'm going to be going in March and she's like you know I said do I need to do this expedite thing and she said no you have time Rusty sure it will get there and so on and so forth so you know that was that and meanwhile while we've been on this trip just coming down here you know there's been all this activity in Argentina with these two translators working with 16 other coursing miracle facilitators down there setting up gatherings and all kinds of arrangements and you know it's just like all that just is a flurry of activity I have nothing to do with it you know it just like arm and seeming to say come and so I saw nothing I wasn't thinking at the beginning this year I'm going to Argentina I didn't see that one coming at all but when you live in the present moment you don't see anything coming you really don't and you don't need to see anything coming you don't need to have like a vision of the future what's going to happen you just show up I mean that's the most wonderful thing about living in the moment is when I come to do these gatherings I don't there's no preparation for them there's no things of what am I going to say or topics or whatever you know it's just the present moment orchestrates everything whatever would be most helpful and that's it I just show up that's all I mean you just show up but she's doing all the work in the background so that's not your task that's her task it's not even a her in it in the sense that when I say I show up we have to look at what that means I don't mean that David shows up because David doesn't exist and neither does anything in this realm I show up in mind I show up in mind with willingness to be helpful and not have a clue I have there's no clue of that how in fact I have a global mailing list of over a thousand people when I get questions from around the world and I answer the questions I'm not using even their names just to say the beloved one and they pour their hearts out and I share this and then it'll send it all over the world and then people will run back and say I know you wrote this just for me I'll get three or four emails I know you wrote this just for me but it's really just it's one ego that's getting exposed and I just let the spirit come through so my willingness is just to to be fully helpful and to be totally dependent for that help so there's not a sense of knowing ahead of time and a lot of times people write in with the question how do I do this how, how, how and I say the Holy Spirit is the how if you have the willingness just the willingness then the how is automatic just that little spark of willingness joined with the might of God's power and strength you put those together and you have this explosion of joy and happiness and wisdom and there's no effort in that explosion of energy not even the slightest bit so you're not saying all that keyboarding either you're just speaking into some sort of a I don't type, I can't type well how does that information get in there but it's just with these little fingers one, two, one, two it doesn't seem that way I mean I'm just in the state of back at the will come and I'll look in there and I'll be in there like this and she'll come in and tell me something she just leaves me alone if I come in he's either a meditation or he's typing and he's like really into it, I know I thought he was using like a voice before he tries some of those there's all kinds of things I can see the miracle of these gatherings from another perspective from what you're just describing seeing Arvind being in our Course in Miracles group on Sunday and him saying I went to this website and it's just wonderful I mean I just I ended up inviting these people to come and I don't know what to do one of the men I'd say he's asked me all these questions what do I do and everything I say oh it's all wonderful I said I'll I'll hire my home for two people to stay that's where I plug in and I'm not into that I don't know how to do all that stuff and I said that's not my thing and he said what do you want me to do but look I mean look at all these gatherings it is like when we received the invitations and a lot of times like for this trip Arvind has really worked very closely with us on all the gatherings and we're sitting at his house like the gatherings coming to and from like I'll just let Holy Spirit guide me on like you know good call and whatever and like for example Oklahoma City I said to Holy Spirit well I just I know the host for Oklahoma City is going to show up today and then we got an email that day from this woman from Oklahoma City who said I said you're going to be in Oklahoma I'd love to have you come to my house and host and share a gathering and I'd love to host you and so I said oh it's so wonderful I was so excited I wasn't even able to call her well this was transpiring I wrote an email to David and and I said my big fear is being gullible and believing all this stuff and all that and Dave responded to me the same day and I went to my Course in Miracles group and I said I've never had anyone address me that's why I said he's not talking to man he's talking to who I really am that I don't identify with but he speaks to me as if I am I am and that's who's talking too I really got it that's the joy in the sense that I don't I don't see evolution I don't see that there's beginning and intermediate and advanced I just see the perfection of what is so literally you know that's why when you work with the Course and you go into forgiveness it takes you to a place where you don't see the error you get you're alive in the moment and when you referred to my fear you said something about what you didn't talk about my fear the old mine you just said something about yes fear is in the past but it's really got it and that's the joy of it because that way there's there's nobody to correct there's nobody to fix there's nobody to change you know you're in a gleeful experience of the joy of it and it just radiates and and then you have fun I mean we did stop in Oklahoma City and this little two-year-old boy just saw me and came right after me and just plopped in my lap and you want me to carry him around by his ankles and you know and so I went all around through the house with him by his ankles in his head he was just exploring the whole house upside down his toys he would be going in his toys upside down and go to see the nanny there was a nanny there he got to go and play with her ankles you know but just when you get into the joy it's just there's such a joy of just extending it and it's like there's you're not coming at it like from a psychological model or a model that the world sees where the helper then has to diagnose the problem and of course the Miracles is saying you know live in the solution if you release the problem you're going to be living the solution and that will be the blessing not trying to say oh what's going on in your life and what's the problem and trying to like the old model of trying to dig down and go through it it's just whatever is most helpful can pour through when you are in that state of joy so that's really what my experience is are you saying you never feel any resistance I feel just joy I mean I have to say have you ever felt any resistance oh but the illusion of the journey was what with tears was I remember going through years of reading listening to music and even the music would flush up the resistance and the struggle and feeling the emotions just like emotional roller coaster ride that would flush up all the resistance right up in my face right into my awareness and then instead of like people saying let's go out for a drink or this and that I would either sit in the theater if they let me the process and to fully feel and move through that resistance or I would go out into the car and I wouldn't even go home I would just stay out in the parking lot and I would think this is too valuable of an opportunity this stuff that's buried down there is I've watched this movie like something like terms of endearment and I've just been on an emotional roller coaster ride and all my emotions are right up there in my consciousness this is too precious to let this opportunity go by so yeah there was lots of seeming surrender opening up turning things over listening to things I used to go through like family photo album because there was a lot of emotions that were flooded with all these family photos and I thought this is just another opportunity for me to flush up all the resistance to the love and I'm going to use this to the hilt and finally when I got to the point where I could look through all the albums with no charges whatsoever then I pitched them all and threw them all away because they had served their purpose perspective at least and that's how it feels now during the early years of travel too it was like living right on the edge I mean I was just having all this love coming at me and all this joy and it was fear of intimacy it was like a frightening experience to have so much love and then after a while I thought well I don't want to hold on to this resistance so I'll let this go too and then just got carried very deeper and deeper into it and now it's like I really don't experience any difference between even like travel or this is like sitting on my couch I could just like Ramon and Maharshi would always just they finally bought him a couch when he was down going just sat on the stones in the dirt for decades but then you get to a point where you just feel in the now moment and it's all the same it's just everything is the same now so it wouldn't matter if we're just sitting on this thing or sitting in a van and seemingly moving across the country sitting in an airplane which I'm sure Argentina has a bullet hole or just sitting on a couch and just being and not feeling a need to you know there's nothing to change there's nothing to fix or whatever I'd say it's the experience of the present moment and it's um I would say it's analogous to complete forgiveness where you've let all the resistance and the grievances that were buried down there rear their heads like come on take the lid off whatever down there any monsters come on everybody up we go up we go all of you down there you know and enlightenment is the place when you had the lid off and you felt the flow and the joy of this and you there's no attempt to hold anything try to hold anything anymore it's like a flow you allow yourself to be washed of every scrap of of error that's what the experience feels like it's very gleeful there's not a sense of guilt or fear there's a sense of invulnerability that comes with it too because you're not at the mercy there's nothing outside of you to be at the mercy of because you're like the entirety of it so that's another way it feels it feels like a sense of strength and certainty, invulnerability you still have certain attachments to the body I mean you were a jacket you'd be cold if you walked outside you'd be hot if you put your hand on the stove those kinds of pain and suffering kinds of things physical body what you find is like I started to explain this and the other thing is that the perception is selective so the more you just stay focused in the present moment then it's like everything of the five senses just gets more and more peripheral and it does feel more like a meditative state just like sometimes when you're meditating and you may you just kind of drop down and you seem to go deeper and deeper you may not be aware of the you know the feel of your rear end on the seat but that's the experience I have in the sense that I get into the just sharing the joy in everything and it's like there's a sense of joy activity and oneness and so the five senses it do become more and more peripheral so I do have a lot of those experiences one time I went to a unity church and they were going to leave the the heat on but when they finished this morning service they automatically flipped off the heat so we had a whole evening afternoon of sessions and this was in winter and so I remember getting in there and here we are we got a big group and we're just getting in you know how they talk about the yogis seem to generate heat when they're in the I was just into the joy of the moment and I did notice that on the peripheral my consciousness is the talk went on for hours and hours and people were in the pews and grabbing their coats and everything but I was really flowing in the joy of the moment so you know somebody say we have one of those little cube heaters and we can aim it over there on the David and the woman who was with me she said don't worry he doesn't need the cube he's not he's just getting so into the joy of the moment and the sharing that he's not where and that's the way it works I think it works that way with with hunger with temperature things and so on and so forth it just becomes more peripheral so like it's like you're encased or you're within this warm in the center of your mind and your being and you feel these other things like in the peripheral of your consciousness but that's the way it has been my experience it does get peripheral