 It was really asking about the difference between hearing the Holy Spirit and hearing the Ego. How tricky that can be, how we could say that the Ego is ingenious so it will masquerade as if it's the Holy Spirit and then you follow what you hear and then you have a very dark fearful experience and you've sowed and reaped fear but you thought you weren't, you thought you were listening to authentic guidance. So this topic is really a topic of discernment and it's an enormous topic. You could do lots of retreats. People know me, I do retreats. The longest retreat I've done is six weeks. Imagine coming to a six week retreat with me. I showed a lot of movies. We had a lot of deep experiences on an island off the coast of Spain, Mallorca. There was a four week and a six week but it's discernment is a very deep topic on the most basic level. How do you feel is the answer to which one you're listening to but also the Ego has invented a whole feel good repertoire of different emotions that feel good in its system and really are part of the death wish. So that's what the Course calls attraction to guilt. You know the Ego has to be pretty clever if it's attracting you to guilt to keep you stuck in guilt and using things of the world as part of alluring ways to stay stuck in that guilt. That's why it takes a lot of discernment. So then the follow-up question we another question was raised too was what if I mean I'm tuning into the spirit and I'm hearing things but what if I hear it and I go that's ridiculous because you remember the world is a world of guilt and pain and shame and fear and the unwinding from it the Holy Spirit and Jesus will ask you to do things that oftentimes the Spirit just judges as plain ridiculous. Part of the ridiculousness in this whole thing is the sense that the Ego has made up a hierarchy of illusions. It's turned the whole cosmic image and all the images into a hierarchy. So part of that hierarchy of illusions are major decisions and minor decisions. A minor decision might be what what kind of what color of shirt or blouse or pair of pants you're gonna wear or what kind of food you're gonna have for breakfast or lunch. A major decision would be a life partner picking a life partner or we'll talk a little bit about that too. But for leading jobs, leading switching careers or decisions that you have to make around a terminal illness to diagnose with cancer or something like that those are more considered the major decisions. The more you go down into the miracle which shows you that there's no order of difficulty in miracles and no hierarchies of illusion. You start to really get a sense that there really aren't major decisions and minor decisions. I'll give an example from the parable of David. A friend of mine many years ago was a Course in Miracle student and my girlfriend from Michigan, Janie, and we took some guided tours with the Holy Spirit here and there in the Senate. We came back around to Cincinnati and we were praying in Cincinnati and we were just tuning in and listening to the Holy Spirit and Jesus and we started feeling like we were gonna be taking a trip out west. It started to come in really strong. So it's coming in stronger, stronger. Yeah, we're going west. We're going west. We're going out, you know, I-70 across. It was coming in stronger, stronger. Go west, go out by 70. But before we left, we were in Cincinnati and the Holy Spirit said I am the destination and I will tell you the direction. And at that point, I had been on a lot of guided trips. Go here, go there, do this, do that, go here. I mean, I had already done many, many, many, many guided trips, many miracles too. So I was really on my major carpet ride just flying with the Holy Spirit and then we're praying and it's like I am the destination and I will tell you the direction. And I told Janie, I said, this is gonna be real interesting. I've never gone on a trip with those kind of instructions. I am the destination. I will tell you the direction. So out we go, we're going through Indiana, Illinois, we're going out to Missouri, we're heading out west, you know, driving across the United States, up great plains, you know, we get, and we're talking, talking, we're talking about Colorado and, you know, and California and we're talking about these future hypothetical thoughts, you know, but really the lesson is I am the, the destination, I will tell you the direction. So we get out to Kansas. Has anybody driven through Kansas? It's like, it's flat and it's like, there's nothing there, you know, it's just wheat fields and corn fields and fields and fields and you drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive. So we're driving there and we got to the point where it started to get a little bit later today. Jesus is like pull over, get a motel room, I don't know, we do that. The next morning we get up and I go, I'm just heading my meditation and I'm meditating and then I hear Jesus saying, go east. You can't possibly have driven up to the middle of Kansas thinking about Colorado and California, all the fun ocean beaches and you got in the middle of Kansas and now, and then the other thing was it was like, how am I going to tell her this is going to be the end of the relationship. You get some wacko guy that's driving out the middle of Kansas and then you get, go east. So it was like share the guide and I was just like, no, not gonna share that, no. And so she's up and getting ready, we all get together, we get in the car, we come, we drive, start driving towards the interstate highway, we're getting closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer we stop in a red light, we're just about to the interstate. I've got Jesus telling me to go east and she's sitting in the passenger side and I'm just looking at her and she just got, her face just totally lit up, a total joy, like a little five-year-old girl and she looked up at me from the passenger side, she said, are you hearing what I'm hearing? Saved by the grace of God. And I said, I think so, what are you hearing? She's like, still holding back. She said, I'm hearing, go east. I pull off onto the ramp and we started heading east and it was like we were in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I thought the car was gonna like go off, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. You remember, thick bandaid up into the sky. That's how it felt because it was one of those moments where it was all about guidance. It was really about being true to the guidance. Let go of all your preconceptions. And I used that example because again that would be in the ridiculous category to drive all away from Cincinnati to Kansas and then to stay in a motel and turn around and drive back east. Like this is the crazy wisdom, you know, the crazy wisdom teachers. But this is what we're dealing with. When you start to unwind from the thinking of the world, you really have to tune in and you really have to be open. What's the tenth characteristic of a teacher of God? It starts off with number 10 is open-mindedness. Perhaps he says the last one to come in. You see, you have to let go of all judgment of what you think everything means and be totally willing to look like a fool to the ego. And believe me, this guidance has been this way over the years. I've had to look like a fool. People laugh at me all the time. They burst out laughing for 15, 20 minutes a half an hour because they think he's just clueless, but he's going to, you know, just like putting on a hat like I'm determined, my Holy Spirit capped me. Come on, let's go. We're going back to heaven here. Let's get the hat on and go for it, you know. You got your hat on and you asked me the question about the ridiculousness. We're going for it. So really, you start to realize in so many ways that we work with people on a daily basis that are being receiving guidance and sometimes involves leaving jobs, leaving partners, leaving children. It can involve relocating. It can involve, you know, what people would call major, major life changes. And we join in prayer and really tune in and hear it because, again, the ridiculous temptation can come in there with some of these prompts from the Holy Spirit. It's unwinding you from a crazy thought system and it's going to use a lot of contrast. And, you know, it's, for us, it's almost like amusing. I mean, Armelle will just be smiling and she'll get a guidance when two people meet or come together or something and we'll just share it. She just shares, shares, shares all of her guidance. It's extreme, as the guidance is, as radical as the guidance is. And then you watch over a week, a month, a couple of months or whatever. It comes around this radical guidance that you would hardly believe. You could easily label it radical or ridiculous and then hear it comes to pass. And she goes, mm-hmm. And that's, you have to have that amount of confidence and trust in the Holy Spirit to take you out of it. Because remember, Jesus said, who is your father, mother, sister, brother? He who does the will of our father in heaven is father, mother, sister, brother. Those family self concepts, those relationship things, those things in terms of jobs. You know, I don't know how many people I've worked with over the years, over this quarter of a century who have got guidance from the Holy Spirit to change jobs or change careers or leave a job. And that in the world, again, is one of those things that would be classified as a major decision. Gia was just one of them. She wrote to me not too long ago and it was just sharing. I'm getting the guidance to leave my skincare business. And, you know, to the world I was like, wait a minute, do you know what the economy's like? And, you know, it could give you all kinds of reasons. And yet, it's a big part of your journey. And again, what I'm saying is we can't pre-judge these things as major and minor decisions. We have to start to realize that the Holy Spirit does not think in that way. The Holy Spirit has the bird's eye view and knows exactly how to unwind us from the world. Like, for example, a lot of times people feel like their life is like a hard piece of wood, like oak wood, that at a nail, a big, long, thick nail, has been hammered into the oak wood. That's what their life is like. They're just, they're so anchored into the ways of the world that it's like having a long, thick nail hammered into oak. But I say, no, no, it's not, it's not the nail into oak. It's a screw. It's a screw. You can't just yank the nail out with one motion. You've got to turn and turn and turn and turn. And the Holy Spirit is the one that has to give you the instructions. That's how embedded the mind is to the ego belief system. It's wound in there like a screw, a tight, long screw that's going to take a lot of reversing of the thought system to get out. And it's very joyful for us because we are very confident in the Holy Spirit. So people come to us and they'll hear some pretty radical guidance and we'll hear too and we'll share it and support it and confirm it.