 Well, welcome to all of you and we're just so delighted to have all of you here to have this amount of interest in your spiritual journey and meeting with all of us and meeting with these two wonderful people, some of you already met Gary, and some of you, David last year, and with David as Claire, and we just want to welcome both of you here. When David came in today, I said it was like you never left, and I think you never really did. Any of us, any people in our group will say, well, David's name comes up often, doesn't he? Well, David said, now we'll be going, Gary said, and I said, but I said that. Gary said, well, that happened to me, too, in my study group. They didn't really listen to me until I wrote my book, and all of a sudden, I became really, really interested. So I don't know if I have to write my book or go to Maine, sometimes, to be a Cincinnati or something. Anyway, I know what a treat we were in with regard to the opportunity to join in this kind of a session. And to do this for the next three nights is just so wonderful. And somebody was saying, well, you know, if I come tonight, what about the other nights? Are they any different than they're always, aren't they? From our last year's experience, we just never know what the Holy Spirit will bring through for our healing. And so we just, our own adventure on a wonderful journey to nowhere. All in dreams. So we're just, it's an opportunity to just ask questions, bring up issues, clarify things, and both Gary and David are happy to respond. Right, Gary? Sure. Just absolutely. I like that. So should we start the night with just centering ourselves and being quiet and just... Welcome, everyone. We're here to serve as always. And the Holy Spirit is with us. And for me, it's an honor to be here. I travel all around the world and I always just adore coming together and giving time over to the Holy Spirit to use for this purpose because it's very profound. And I'm sure Gary feels how honored it is to just do this kind of purpose and mission. It's the greatest job in the world. And I'm very honored to be here with Gary as well. We have been doing a lot of the same thing, if any of you have seen the web or whatever, but these bodies have been traveling all over the place. And we're going to be down in Australia together in November. Just happened to coincide and then Sarah and I, I guess, so the Holy Spirit has brought us together. And we are here to call on the Holy Spirit to bring clarity, to address your questions with the Course in Miracles. Since both of us teach about the Course in Miracles and are very involved with it. And also the practical application. That's what my whole life has been devoted to. I have been traveling around and doing these gatherings for like 15 years and living on divine providence kind of like Jesus and the apostles. It's a very experiential journey for me. It is a very profound thought system. And I realized when I first opened the book that it was my way out of conflict. I'm sure a lot of you have had that experience where you start working with it and you go, oh my, this is an answer to a prayer. And so the metaphysics of the Course are very important because it really sets the stage for the workbook and for the laboratory, the transfer of training. And that's what's great. You can ask both of us a lot of questions because here we are. We've both been called. We've been traveling around and of course applying it in our own lives. And that's what you're doing. And so it's helpful to be able to get clear on the metaphysics. And it's also very helpful to have examples. And Gary's book is loaded with questions and answers, with descendant masters. And everything I've done for the last 14 years has been the same thing. Just sessions like this with lots of questions and answers where anybody can ask anything. There's no taboo topics. There's nothing that's sacred in terms of things. It's just feel free to bring things up and ask from your own experience to let the question come up and we'll do our best to answer. I'd like to ask you, David, do you ever get frightened about living on divine providence? And how's it working for you? And how do you handle it? Like with Gary, at least sales of the book, I would think make you feel secure that you can go around and not worry about money, but I guess I'm just projecting my own stuff in here. I would worry. If it were me, I'd be worried. And I'm wondering, and I'm worried and it is even me. So... Since we're all one, I guess. Yeah, I think in the last year when I was there, you were bringing up those financial concerns down. So what are through the instrument of peace again? Yeah, we're going to do that in the last time. I think this is a teaching that you have to go real deep with it and it's about giving a breath of prosody. Early on when Jesus said, you know, freely you have received, now freely give, I had a lot of dialogues back and forth with Jesus. Like, are you talking about the same realm that I'm talking about? And I've never found a tree that has $20 bills, or you can harvest them whenever you need them. But actually that's exactly what the Course asked you to do. With lessons like Lesson 50, I am sustained by the love of God and your own God-dependence kind of lesson. And Lesson 76, I am under no laws but God where he calls money. Green paper strips and piles of metal discs. I think we need a new version with the plastic cards in there. And pin numbers. Yeah, there's pin numbers in there. But no, actually I had a lot of miracles back in 1991 when I first started doing this. And it's like the Holy Spirit just kind of knocked my socks off with that first trip for five and a half weeks. I mean, I was staying one night at the campground, another night sleeping on a houseboat. So many different things were offered to me and came in so many different directions that I think my first lesson was just pride at receiving. You know, I would refuse a lot of things initially but the Holy Spirit would say, you know, that's me offering you that place to stay or that meal. Don't let the pride get in the way. And of course there was fear within pride but I was pretty quickly able to just say, wow, this is spectacular. I am so well taken care of as I go around. And I felt how profound, that this was a very profound calling and that I was saying yes to it. So that began as just a series of oodles and oodles of miracles and that really convinced me that there wasn't anything to be afraid of. And I don't take anything for granted. I mean, recently I was on a trip this year and I was going through a city I'd never been to, Las Cruces in Mexico, and Kathy had talked to somebody there and the man thought of me and said, I've traveled a bit like you and shared a couple of miracles on the road and I'm so honored that you're doing what you're doing and he said, you know, can I take, if you come through Las Cruces, can I take you out to dinner and can I buy you a motel room and all this and that. And I'd never met the man, I'd never been to Las Cruces, I wasn't even doing a gathering there. He was just calling on my cell phone and offering to buy me a meal and a motel room. And I was just, again, like a little kid, like, oh my gosh, as if it was happening for the first time, even though it had happened thousands and thousands of times, it's always like the first time for me. Like, wow, that's a miracle. You know, I don't just take anything for granted. So, no, I don't feel fear around being provided for it because it's come at me in so many different ways. I've done a lot of world travels recently and they've all been either donating tickets or frequent flyer miles. A friend of mine had been praying. He'd worked at Steele where he'd flown a bunch of Latin American airlines and as part of some promotion that he won the grand prize, the bonus of one million frequent flyer miles. And he happened to be praying and saying to God, I'd like some of these miles to be used in the service of your plan. And two days before that, a friend of mine, Resta, had received an email from Argentina saying, so happy to hear you're coming to Argentina even though we didn't make any conscious plans to do it. He met me. He said, I've always wanted to go to Argentina. I didn't even have a passport. But in six weeks, there I was with four or three friends. You met them last time. Resta was with me and Carrie was here last time. My travel angel, I called him. So those are just examples about how it comes in all kinds of different ways. And it's so abundant that I really don't have any fear whatsoever around how it's going to work out because I know it's the Holy Spirit really running the show. And thank God. How did you get into it? Because, for instance, I feel that's what I would like to do with you guys. I've even written books and I've published, but I would like to travel and talk about the Course, a truth wherever it comes from. And so how did that unfold for you? How did you get into doing, going from a nine to five gig, if you ever had to, you probably had to before to where you're just like a free spirit in the wind and be provided abundantly. Carrie Irr? Either one. For both? For both types. Well, I've done kind of like ridiculously well because I had the whole thing just handed to me on a silver platter basically including the book that I wrote. I'm not really the author of it. I'm just the student in the book. I'm not the teacher. And what happened was these two ascended masters appeared to me in person on my living room couch, which was pretty high up there on the weird shadow meter. Be ready. And it gave me all this information over a period of nine years and all I had to do was keep track of it, record it, and write it down. And I did work for long minutes between numerous breaks in order to write my narration for the book. So here's my story in the book of how it all happened and how it affected me. And it's just all gone so smooth. They were telling me what to do with the book all along and somewhere along the line they taught me how to pray in such a way that I could receive inspiration from the Holy Spirit. As you know, the word inspired means to be inspired. And so I learned how to pray and join with God in such a way that it wasn't about getting anything. It wasn't about making things happen in the dream. It was just about being with him and being with his love. But a funny thing happens later on when you do that. It's kind of like an after effect that comes from doing it. And what happens is you might be sitting around doing nothing special and all of a sudden an idea comes to you and it's like, oh yeah, that's it. And that's an inspired idea. And it kind of guides you. You can feel the Holy Spirit guiding you as to what you should do. If you have a decision to make, what the decision should be. That's really helped me a great deal to know what to do. Everything has just gone so smoothly. It's been really easy for me. I'm having a great time. I feel like I'm being pampered. I haven't done as much as David has been doing so much for so many years. This guy travels so much. It's like I can't go anywhere without people saying, oh yeah, David was just here. So you're saying with that guidance it comes with ease. You're saying it's not a thing where you have to struggle because I don't believe in that. I've given up struggling for anything in my life. Like, you know, I won't do it. So just, it's a yielding again I guess, right? And just paying attention to what you're being. Yeah, it's very easy. Yeah, that's cool. And the struggling doesn't be any good anyway. It's not productive anyway. And there are really a couple of basic ways of getting inspiration. I just described one of them. I didn't go into detail. There's a certain kind of prayer that leads to inspiration. But also when you practice forgiveness, the kind of forgiveness that's taught in A Course in Miracles, then that really clears out the stuff in the unconscious mind as the Course describes it. So as you remove those blocks, you get more access to the power of the mind and then you start to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit a lot more clearly also. So that leads to inspiration. It's kind of like, you know, we're resigning from being our own boss and we're letting the Holy Spirit take over and be the boss. And so now we're following the wisdom that's created in our own. Thanks for being ready because I was telling Palo that you guys won later. But I had, I interested in dialogue with a tree about, about being. So I do know, like you said, weird stuff does. Because I told my friend and my friend's like, are you schizophrenic? I said, yeah, I act in a tree and that's what I got. Seven Masters Trees, are you ready? When you're working with the scores, do you have a clue that you're ready? Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm schizophrenic and so am I. For me, I had a deep desire to, I think I'd gone through the looks of the world to the point where I really reached a point of disillusionment and saying, there's got to be another way, kind of like Helen and Bill went through, you know, just the point of, there's got to be a better way than the way I've been living. And I was in college for 10 years, so I kind of did the Renaissance man kind of thing, where I studied everything in the university. I mean, from, well, like the art sciences and chemistry and calculus and the physical sciences to music, conservatory of music and art, art history and philosophy, psychology, anthropology, you know, the whole, really, the whole gamut. And I was able to see that all the disciplines had different assumptions about the nature of the world. Even though they would say, like, I'm an expert in the field, they seemed to have a very narrow view of what the world was and that the musicians were not seeing the same world as the professors were. And even the sociologists were not seeing the same world as the psychologists. There was different emphasis. And I said, well, there has to be some kind of truth or some kind of experience beneath all these different concepts and assumptions. And so by the time that the course came into my life, I had already been really doing a lot of deep inner contemplation and spent most of my 10 years in the psychology, philosophy, religion and learned a lot, which really just increased my vocabulary so I could give it over to the Holy Spirit to use for these encounters. So I could relate to people whether they said they were agnostic or atheists, whether they were scientists or philosophers or psychologists or social workers, I could speak their language. And working with the course it was just like an answer to a prayer of what's, could I please have a rapid way of getting in touch with all this unconscious darkness and clearing away the mirror of my mind. So when I got the course I just opened it up and I just felt like waves of love just crashing over me. And I knew my whole life would never be the same and I didn't even know how I would be used, but I knew that it was my calling and that I would answer that call. And so the last, I mean I read the course for about 8 hours a day when I first got it. I was so much like this is it that I had nothing better to do with my time. I still had things that I had duties, responsibilities I would handle those things as well but when I could squeeze 8 hours out of the day I would spend it with the course. I still had resistance to the message. So my eyes would get heavy and I would fall asleep and the Holy Spirit is so gentle. I would take a swim or have a nap or take a walk. Very loving, easy, gentle nothing goes to the mountain and meditates for 12 hours a day or something like that. So that really guided me into it and then it was around 1991 that I was impelled to start traveling and teaching what I would learn just putting myself out there and I was very well aware that I was just teaching myself so that really sped up I call it the enlightenment experience because you have to be willing to let go of everything you think you know you have to be willing to let go of thinking that somebody else is providing for you or that you're providing for yourself really it's the Holy Spirit that's the provider and all these years of travel have given me lots of opportunities to heal to the point that I got to a point where I just got so joyful and so happy that the upsets just vanished and disappeared and so now it's not so much the words I say because obviously I only speak English so I go to other countries now and I smile a lot and I get a lot of hugs and then there's like usually a trail of translators following me around that are aside from my smiles and hugs that are putting the words into the language where I go German or Spanish or so forth and it's the attitude the course says to teach us to demonstrate and it's really our attitude that's the demonstration and I'm very happy and so I tend to have a lot of people once and buses and trains and subways people come up and they start talking to me because I'm very happy and that's really the goal of the course is to be constantly happy to reach a state of salvation or enlightenment and then to just continue to be in that state and nationally teaching and reflecting and radiating what's inside you and I should say that the curriculum is really not about love it's about removing the obstacles from love so the Mary's book and everything that I talk about and write we don't just generally just show up with the flowers and go God is love and all is love do that kind of thing generally what we're talking about in our gatherings is when stuff comes up issues and you're tempted to project and to blame this is my lesson I need to hand it over to the Holy Spirit instead of pointing the finger and that's what I've been doing for 13 years it's just joining with everyone where everyone believes they are it's not like about coming to say God is love and all is love and affirmations and this and that but this is really a course in removing the obstacles and when I join together with everyone that's what we do so that's how it went for me it started with Gary it was very easy it was like grace it was just like handed it fell into my lap and then I said it's in English it's not even in Hebrew or Latin or Greek and I said I really had the feeling initially I have no excuse now I better really get busy with the inner work it's been a wonderful tool in front of me and now it's up to me to take it all away thank you I need to remember this over and over and I know of course I believe it's all about forgiveness so I don't know if you're going to be able to answer this fully what keeps on coming up for me is forgiveness isn't like the world's forgiveness and Gary and me too David asked me talked about it so the forgiveness is it about seeing the Christ and others is it about miracles is it about surrendering to the Holy Spirit is it all those things I get with sort of a big thing it's not about our normal forgiveness is it many things that we do not remember great at the moment no, Gary a lot of anticipation with the sentiment came at that over and over and over in the book yeah well forgiveness is about releasing yourself you know the reason the people are innocent isn't because they're really there the reason that they're innocent so we say we're forgiving them for this we're not really forgiving them for this we're really forgiving them because we made up the whole thing in the first place so taking responsibility doesn't have to be a heavy thing it's just remembering that we made up the whole thing in the first place and there was a reason for it and the reason for it is something that was erroneous it was a false belief about ourselves and so we had to make up this universe of time and space as a scapegoat so that the responsibility and the guilt would be seen as outside of us instead of inside of us and once we understand that then we can kind of like reverse it and it's like my teacher said you've got to learn how to turn the tables on the ego the only way to forgive what is within is to forgive what seems to be without that's the only way out so forgiveness is really about undoing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence by forgiving these images that seem to be outside of us and what these images are are symbolic of the contents of our own unconscious mind and so as we forgive the corresponding symbols of it the Holy Spirit is like healing our unconscious mind at the same time so instead of being divided over and over and over again it's like the mind is becoming whole again it's like returning the wholeness and saying this the word holy comes from the word wholeness originally so it's like we're undoing all this stuff it's like the Course says your job is not to seek for love your job is to seek for all the areas that you have put a barrier in between yourself and the Lord and as you forgive something that it turns out we actually made up ourselves then the mind has returned to us and seen us so it's a summary to make it real straightforward and simple the world teaches forgive your brother and sister for what they did and the Course teaches forgive your brother and sister for what they did not do now again like Gary's saying the only way that second part would make sense was what if it was make-believe what if it was hallucination what if it was your own mistaken hallucination that needed to be released it had nothing to do with what your body's eyes were perceiving that the five senses were made up by the ego and they're in cahoots with the ego they just constantly these five senses bring witnesses to separation and experimentation and so forgiveness is going to have to be within your mind it's like you've got to get back there in the projector room and you've got to even get behind the film before you're going to actually have a full release much less being out there in the theater going oh that's terrible oh that's stop stop doing that you see from that metaphor of the projector we have to get way way back beneath the film which is like the subconscious mind way back to that light it's way back there in the projector so there's even a major motion picture now called Dark City where they actually have a scene in it that teaches forgive them for they know what they do or teaches that you forgive somebody for what they didn't do and the main character is realizing that this dark world is made up by these dark thoughts and that it's all a setup it's all implant they're planting memories stolen memories, forms rolled all together based on grievances and hurt and pain and there's one point where the main character is in prison and his wife comes to visit him on the other side of the glass and she thinks that she's committed the sin she's committed adultery she's cheated on her husband and she feels very guilty a lot of remorse and she starts to talk about it and he says no he didn't do it and she says I didn't do it nobody didn't do it somebody just wants to make you think you did it and he comes to the whole trick of the whole dark city world that is all false memories false thoughts that have been planted there to make guilty so, you know she says it seems so real and again he knows it's a false memory that's been planted it's not real they end up saying I love you and they reach out to touch their hands on each side of the glass and then the glass shatters and she says you can't fake that and then they reach across the glass and they embrace and I thought oh my gosh find me at the major motion picture a teaching of the course that you forgive your brother for what he did not do so that's why you have to really work with the course to really convince you that the world is a hallucination because as long as you think it's real and as long as you think that you as a person are real it will seem as if things are being done to that person the role of the accuser will seem to appear in many forms and Jesus says it will seem to be accusing you but have no fear it will go at last