 It's like the ego always wants us to have goals, future goals, on the timeline. And then I remember this Dan Fogelberg song, and there's a line in it that goes, Storybook endings never appear there, just someone's way of leading us here, leading us here, leading us to the present moment. The Storybook endings never appear. The parables aren't like fairy tales where you hope it has a good ending. What is a good ending? This is about the disappearance of the universe. This is about dissolving the personality self. This is about giving up happy endings. Hallelujah, I got to a point where I saw the contradiction of happy endings, that there were no happy endings, that time is simultaneous, it's not linear, and that I don't have to keep trying to keep reaching off, like for the piece of cheese, which the ego keeps moving, of course, as you reach for it. You go for these things, and you never do get what you're going for in the ego system. It's a system to distract you, so you'll keep seeking and striving to attain bigger, better, faster, more, and it keeps moving it. You never get there. It's like an empty chasing things, and they never show up. There's another line, I remember listening to the Stan Fogelberg's song, and it goes, And in the time it takes us to look beyond the lies, We could be sailing through each other's eyes. Sailing through each other's eyes, I want that. At the time it takes us to look beyond the lies, we could be sailing through the, And then in those stolen moments, when love is cut off guard, we see it never had to be this hard. It's, everything in this world is backwards and upside down. Everything that we strive for, we just reinforce the striving. Everything we strive for in the future, we're just reinforcing the ego. All this stuff about Horatio Algiers, and pull yourself up from the booze traps, and attain something, and achieve something, make something of your life, have ambition, drive yourself, make something better of your life, and everything. It's all a trap. God created us perfect. God created us perfect. God did not create us to strive. God did not create us to try to make ourselves, and remake ourselves, and reinvent ourselves over and over and over. All of this reinventing the personality self is all part of a distraction to guard against, be still, and know that I'm God. All of this huge effort at self-improvement, you know, the self-improvement and self-help books and everything, all of that. And that, all of that is part of a giant effort to guard against, be still, and know myself, be still, and know yourself as one with God. So once I got into the trick of this world, and I started to realize, my gosh, like Anya was asking, what's next? I said, this is a dismantling. And hallelujah, let the dismantling occur. I'm ready to be dismantled. I'm ready to be dissolved. I'm not afraid of not existing, because I know my being and my life is in my creator, and not in anything of images. I'm not afraid of the disappearance of the universe. I've actually had three revelatory experiences where the world has, the three dimensionality has collapsed, and the great rays just poured through, and the whole worst world has disappeared. Gary writes about the disappearance of the universe. It's happened three times to me, and it's been glorious each time. It's been a direct experience of love and light and knowing. It's like going beyond the veil, and it's been absolutely wonderful. And there was no sacrifice involved in it. It wasn't like I had this feeling like, oh, I'm aware of everything now, but look what I had to give up to be aware of everything. There was no, but look what I gave up in the light. It's just like, aha, aha, of course, yes, hallelujah, rejoice, you know. That's all what the light is about. So from this side of the veil, we could say with the ego perspective, the ego is always going to say there's going to be a cost, it's going to take something from you, you know, you're not going to exist anymore. What? Like I existed in time and space, you know, like the Holy Spirit thinks it's laughable, this fear of not existing, you know. Read Lesson 139. I will accept the Atonement for myself. He says in there, you are yourself, and yet you doubt it. You know, it's almost like you're in kindergarten or maybe preschool, and he's like, you are yourself, and yet you doubt it, you know. You doubt the only thing that you can ever be certain about, and yet you still insist on doubting it, you know, that you are yourself. He's got another lesson in the workbook, you know. He's like, the truth is true, and only the truth is true. The first time you do the lesson, it's like, oh, come on, what do you think I am? The truth is true, and only the truth is true. You said both, you must accept both parts of the statement. Because if you believe the truth is true, you're not willing to accept that only the truth is true, then you don't know that the truth is true. It's like, oh, what is this? Remedial metaphysics, you know, let's get back to the basics. But he's really sincere. He's like saying, this is more simple than you can conceive of. Everything in this world has been a lie to trick you. Everything in this world is backwards and upside down. He says in the Course, you can't even judge your advances from your retreats. That's pretty confused. So it's no wonder we get disoriented when we start to have some enlightening experiences. Then all of a sudden, oh, who am I? What am I? We had, several weeks ago, the Bukowski brothers came out with their next movie after The Matrix, Cloud Atlas. Some of you have seen Cloud Atlas. And Francis was just having one of those days where we were driving around the car and she was sitting in the passenger side and she was like, just shaking her head, looking down and shaking her head, looking down. Having one of those really disorienting, disillusioning days. And she was like, who am I? Who am I? Who am I? He said, she looked at me and she said, it's all I can think of now. Who am I? Who am I really? And it was just one of those really disillusioning days, you know. And I remember Kirsten had one of those when I was down one time at a coffee amusement park down in Columbia. She just got her eyes, got real goo goo, and she just, she couldn't even hardly walk. She was just kind of all, who am I? You know, just kind of wobbly head, like those bobble head dolls, you know. The back of the car is just, who am I? Almost like just totally emptied out. And she, I had to literally take her hand and walk her all day. Like a little, like a three-year-old. She couldn't even, we'd go into the, to get something to have all, it was a coffee. Where the coffee beans, they raised them, Juan Valdez all over. And she would just kind of look at the menu and go, what is, I can't read. I can't read, you know, she couldn't read. She could hardly walk, I just took her hand. Stay, Francis is in the car, who am I, who am I? And I said, well, let's, I have a prompt from the Holy Spirit that we're supposed to go see the Spokalsky brothers saying, and she's like, but who am I? And I said, it's not important. I said, just come with me. And I have a feeling that all you have to do is come into the theater. I'll buy the ticket, and we'll sit there, and we'll just watch the movie. And the movie will answer your question. And you don't have to figure it out. And if any of you have ever seen Cloud Atlas, it's not the kind of movie that you really want to try to follow the plot to. If you try to follow the plot, you'll be very disillusioned. But she was already disillusioned coming in. And I just said, just come, and you will watch the movie, and you'll have an experience that will answer your question. And that's exactly how it played out. We watched the movie, we sat there, and then we got to the final 10 minutes of the movie, and she just started bursting off and crying. And she started crying, and she cried, and cried, and cried, and cried, all the last 10 minutes of the movie. And then when the credits came on, she just put her head in my lap, and just bawled, and just cried, and cried, and cried. And then she finally when her head came up, she went, that was great. I feel wonderful. No, it wasn't psychotherapy, it wasn't prayer, it wasn't all these other things. It was just the willingness to go in there and watch the movie, and just be open. And actually to not try to figure it out. That was the frustrating thing. The who am I thing was she was just going in circles with what's the meaning of it. She just had been interviewed, too, by Kenneth Bach, I think, for ACIM Explained. And he was asking her all these questions about her life and all these time things, parable things, about the life of Francis. And after she did the interview, she just was like, that kind of started off into this, but who am I really? She was feeling that she wasn't the character. She was starting to feel disoriented and not feeling identified with that historical character. And yet none of the questions were about, tell us about enlightenment, or tell us about the present moment. They were all journalistic kind of questions. And that started this who am I thing rolling in her head. And then she just surrendered. And isn't that great that we can do that? We can just surrender. Isn't it great that you don't have to figure out your worldly life? Isn't it great that Jesus says nothing so blinding as perception of form? The sight of form means that understanding has been obscured. Wow, what kind of teacher is that? That's great. It's great to start to see that I do not know my own best interest. It's great to start to really say and mean I do not know what anything is for. And it's great, like Kerry was saying, to have a community of like-minded people or you could call them mighty companions down in Australia. They call them mighty mates. They get the mate part in there. The mighty mates. Always rewriting Jesus a little. Mighty mates. But they're there, you know? They're there to reflect the love back. When you feel like you're falling apart and going insane, instead of the people showing up in the white jackets to put you in a jacket, somebody's saying, I'll come here. Let me hold you. Isn't it great that you can be held instead of locked up for thinking that you're something beyond flesh and bone? I think it's wonderful. It's a huge relief. And it's a huge acceleration. I never did, I just didn't have anyone to hold me during that. I was still going through all the shakes and the tears and it went on for years and years and years and years. But I really was determined to hear Jesus. You know, that I thought, if I just really hang in with this and if I could just hear Jesus talking to me and he can guide me, actually that was great to finally get the voice of instruction in there. Go here, go there, do this, do that. Call so-and-so, go visit so-and-so. Thank God for that, you know? Because then I didn't need anything else. I just needed to follow the instructions. Like, you know, none of us got an owner's manual. We get owner's manual for cars. We get for appliances, refrigerators, washers, dryers. You know, you get a cell phone, you get an owner's manual. But we never got an owner's manual for what this world was about until the course came. And then we were like, ha, ha, ha, ha. I can guide you, but you must do exactly what I say. Okay, we could feel it inside. This is, that's the first thing I felt about the courses I thought. The author of this book is not on this planet. It's not in time and space. That's the first thing I thought, because I had read so many books, I could tell, I could pick up any book and read through it and tell you the author's assumptions. Just, I could list them all off. The author believes in this, this, this, this. Then I'd pick another book up and the author believes in this, this, this. I could tell you the assumptions of every author of every book I ever read. It didn't matter if it was science, religion, sociology, it didn't matter. And then when I opened up the court, take your breath away. Oh, my God. This author doesn't have any assumptions. This is not coming from inside of time and space. This is coming from beyond time and space. I could feel that and I think a lot of us have had that experience with the course. And then what else are you going to do but give yourself over, use me, put the pedal to the metal, go for it.