 There's a part of the Course that says you may be surprised at how different the goals this Course is advocating are from the goals that you hold in your mind. This is a Course that is turning me around and is having a go within to try to hold that constant purpose in mind and stabilize our perception. And what happens, a lot of times when people start working with the Course, I think, is there a sense that many times that this Course will ask me to give up something that is valuable, something that I like and I enjoy, and that somehow there's going to be a giving up involved. So there's a sense of sacrifice at times when people work with the Course. And I think one of the things that we can look at with that idea is that sacrifice is an idea in the mind. And it's a very, very, very deeply rooted idea. In a metaphysical sense, the mind has turned away from the light and has kind of identified with the self-concept in all this form. And basically, it's afraid of the light. And so to go towards the light now, it believes that it has to give up things of real value, things that it's very familiar with now, things that it's very accustomed to. The status quo. The sort of things about the status quo that the mind likes. And that it's seen as, uh-oh, I don't want to rock the boat, I don't want to change the status quo. Another way we can talk about it is kind of like the world, the way that the mind descends against the Holy Spirit. It's orders all of the thoughts in its mind. So even though we can just stop their images, it's the ordering of the thoughts that is where the judgment comes in. We were talking a little bit tonight about the idea of judgment. And one of the common ways that we're looking at judgment is to condemn. To condemn your brother. But when we get to this whole idea of ordering the images and the hierarchies of illusions, this is where judgment kind of takes on a more finer point. Because then you start getting into the subtleties of preference. And remember, those subtleties are still important because from those ordering, from those self-concepts that I will, goals come forth. And that's where those expectations come in that we were just talking about. Even if it's something as simple as, you know, you're driving down and you see an open parking space and you're trying to get there and somebody comes around and gets in there. And you feel a little bit of a frustration that somebody beat you to the parking space. Well, you know, there was an expectation, that's mine. I picture myself in that parking space or whatever. So, it's very simple. May I share a thought? Sure. I heard you say that before and it got heard to me today and I was listening to one of Watney's tapes. And he talks about it in a packed interpretation. So there was this open parking place, somebody else took it, and so what we do with it, is we interpret that somebody took my parking place. Some of it became clear to me. I mean, we did it in other ways and there is an expectation, but somehow it's my parking place. Like, somebody intentionally took it away from me so that I feel victimized. Yes. And there is that sense of, I mean, why would it be offensive unless there was, we could trace it back to something that was offending me. And there's that me again, what the fundamental question is, what is the me? I'm any more concerned about the dynamics, which are a little bit reverse of that. Suppose I pull into the parking lot and I see a space, and I'm oblivious to the fact that another person is aiming from that space, and I get the parking space, but I get out of the car, here's a driver that's behind me, who is red in the face and just about bursting at the scenes. Not a wide bearing in responsibility because I was insensitive to his sense of ownership. Yeah, I think the thing about it, once we, if we break it down and kind of look at the parts and start to come from that, we can get, it can get away real quick, but we have to get back to that idea of purpose. One of the really neat lines in the course is that under the Holy Spirit's teaching, that there aren't any losers, that everyone gains. In fact, the whole sonship gains from every decision that the Holy Spirit, we make with the Holy Spirit. So, and I think underneath what you were saying too is, can in any way shape or form, can one cause any kind of upset? Or is there a responsibility involved for other people's feelings in any way shape or form? Even in any degree, you know, I think that's a very core issue. And I think what we're, what we, of course it's teaching is that no, it is absolutely, there is, you have complete responsibility for your own state of mind. In fact, even if he even simplifies it further, he says the sole responsibility of the Teacher of God is to accept the Atonement for himself. Or as I like to say, it's my lesson. Now, if, if I'm really at peace, if I really am in a defenseless place, you know, it's not a matter of kind of a listening, if I really am completely defenseless then automatically the Holy Spirit will, will, I will perceive this as a call for love, you know, in my brother. And automatically whatever that response is to be, it may just be a smile, it may be just a kind word, or maybe they'll be words or something. But see that, the behavior is completely involuntary. In other words, we're not responsible for choosing our, our behaviors. We're responsible for lining up with the Holy Spirit. And as soon as we do that, whatever comes through is our, will, will be most helpful for the whole sentient. So, but it's really a crucial thing because all of the guilt, as soon as I believe that I can, can upset someone else, or that someone else can upset me either way, then I'm back down to that helplessness and powerlessness again because there's something, there's actual harm that can be done, you know, from something on the screen going away I didn't want to or something like that. I think that's just a key issue. Let's say you're saying that the core is to be clear in your own center. And then, in other words, it isn't to be clever enough to respond in the right way, which is the way psychology would approach it or something like that. It is simply just to be clear in your own center and then trust that the automatic response because of the own clarity, that's where you started tonight was clarity, your own clarity, at least, that's your responsible, you can trust your response within your awareness. I mean, I still have to own the fact that I am, I am not usually at what I would call perfect peace. It's sort of relative peace maybe in my own experience. And there's always a little bit of my cage that can rattle under some circumstances. But I recognize that my cage is rattling and I'm responsible for that part of it. But I guess it's been an interesting awareness to try and understand, become more complex because I also have the feeling that maybe this was a technique that was being applied to me that shocked me out of my complacency or my certainty or whatever. I don't know, that's just a mental game, whether that may or may not have been, but it was an interesting experience. And I guess part of it is to, if I still have that aspect of maybe feeling that there ought to be some level to which one could understand the dynamics, at least from the standpoint of the course, as to maybe you won't know why or even how. But I guess the question I'm asking is, I certainly felt relatively at peace, if not even deeply at peace, but it didn't have any appearances of what would normally turn a peaceful situation. And that's, I guess, where I'm raising the question, that when we're truly at peace, would the situations that surround us be truly at peace? Or can one be truly at peace and have a bound ground on it? What we're getting at is that it's not peace, it's not situational, or it's not tied into appearances in any way. In other words, Jesus is a good example too of accepting the Atonement and just choosing to see the world differently. And that what seems to go on on the screen seems to go on, including maybe even an angry mob yelling, crucified, maybe like thousands of them in one accord, which in any way shape or form, you may not consider that peaceful by any standard of definition. But in the course he's saying, I did not share their perception. He did not perceive it as an attack and therefore it was holding onto that torch of peace, regardless of what was going on on the screen, so to speak. So that, for me, that's a good extreme example of it's just my choice and I have to be very clear, though. And when we get back to that, it gets back to clarity, that there's a part in the Course that says that the Holy Spirit has only two orders of thought, that He perceives everything as love or a call for love. And it says, you are too bound to form to perceive consistently like the Holy Spirit perceives. And you're too bound to form and not to content. So it gets back to, when we have definitions of who people are, what certain behaviors mean, even the judgment of was it a shock technique or something like that, whenever we start to interpret the behaviors, we get away from what's my purpose, what am I to be holding onto, and we get kind of out there on the screen and that's where the reaction comes in. It's certainly that I'm describing more form than I am content. And I think from a deeper perspective, it's kind of like the mind denied all these attack thoughts and tried to push them out of awareness. And then another way that the ego counsels it, the way to get rid of attack thoughts is to project them out onto the screen so that you can consider that everything that we see that we would, if you call maybe a frightened situation, is literally the form that's become a concrete, concretized form of fear. There's something in my mind that I can't accept and look at and take responsibility of just a thought that I had or that I made up that I don't want to look at that. So I keep it buried and unconscious and then I project it out and therefore I see something that's objectionable in someone else or some other situation or thing. That's the dynamics, the deeper dynamics that are going on beneath what we're talking about. Well, I guess that would go back to the earlier part of the question which was, Jermaine, did I attract this to myself by some awareness? That's one metaphysical gambit that some people play with that I can accept the courses since all things are lessons that he would have us learn and I guess I've been dealing with what's the lesson, you know, and that's what you're really into. But there is this sense in which nothing comes into our lives that we ask for it in some level. And I'm saying, I guess I heard you say did Jesus ask to be crucified or at one level known or at another level, yes. Part of a teaching kind of demonstration. That's a good point you bring up though It's like there is a line in the Course that says everything that seems to happen to me I ask for and seem as I have asked, which kind of hits right on the head with what you're saying. What happens though is people will take a metaphysical idea like that, which is responsibility. And we are responsible for accepting the Atonement. The only thing we're responsible for is choosing to be in our right mind, to choose the Holy Spirit. What happens is once you get down and you bring that statement of responsibility into the level of form, then you're getting into guilt. Take an idea like I'm responsible. I attract things to me and then cancer. You can see now we're going to confuse the levels and you're going to see immediately how the guilt comes in. I attracted this cancer to me. Whack, whack, whack, whack. I mean how can one make a statement like that and not feel guilt? I'm doing the Course wrong. I should be better. I should be able to heal myself. It doesn't so much matter where you go from there There's an I am responsible statement which is up here at the level of the right mind. I am responsible for choosing the right mind. But then once I raise body thoughts, once I bring the cancer in the body up and I try to raise it to the level of mind and I hook my self-responsibility in with that that behavior or that form which I'm judging is terrible and awful. The guilt automatically results. So once again it's kind of like it's bringing the mind to see that the only way the correction can take place is by changing our thoughts. There's no amount of changing our behaviors as much as we'd like to say if I'd only done this different, if I'd only hit a mammogram or if I'd only had a lot of beta carotene or started to come up with all the if only but to say wait a minute I'm not going to look at the behavior level. I have a choice this instance and I want to perceive this situation differently. I want to link with a different thought system in my mind at the thought level that can give me a different way of perceiving this. I want to choose right-mindedness. That's the way out of the correction. David did that get occurred to me. When I was taking science and mind classes talking about the importance of clarifying exactly what you're treating for and one example I heard was that if I'm trying to pray for patience then I probably am going to get a lot of things coming in my life but it won't teach me patience. If I can get on past that area to the acceptance level and accept