 Hi everyone, welcome again to our A Course in Miracles workbook lessons live. I'm spontaneously popping in with the lessons and wow we've had some great ones already. This week yesterday was a mind opener one so today's lesson will relate very closely to our workbook lesson from yesterday. I do not perceive my own best interest so today we're starting in with workbook lesson number 25. I do not know what anything is for me. Okay, here we go. Purpose is meaning. Today's idea explains why nothing you see means anything. You do not know what it is for. It is meaningless to you. Everything is for your own best interest. That is what it is for. That is its purpose. That is what it means. It is in recognizing this that your goals become unified. It is in recognizing this that what you see is given meaning. So beautiful that first paragraph is carrying on from what we said yesterday that only a constant purpose can endow events with a stable meaning. And that as long as you're looking through the ego's filter, then you're basically seeing the ego's world that projected, and the ego doesn't understand what purpose is or meaning it's made up its own substitute purposes for everything in the world, including the people. So the personalities are projections of, sometimes I call them preference packages, the preference packages in the mind and they're projected out as people. And so, as long as we don't have a unified goal in our mind, we really can't understand purpose at the level of the mind. And Jesus will make a distinction to help us with that coming up here. You perceive the world and everything in it as meaningful in terms of ego goals. These goals have nothing to do with your own best interest. Because the ego is not you. This false identification makes you incapable of understanding what anything is for. As a result, you are bound to misuse it. When you believe this, you will try to withdraw the goals you have assigned to the world, instead of attempting to reinforce them. Again, this is beautiful. This is like the first two lessons of the year, the first two lessons of the workbook, nothing I see means anything. I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me. Yeah, he's saying you have assigned goals to the world and once you try to withdraw the goals, once you actually believe that these are ego goals and that you're misusing the world, then you'll attempt to withdraw the goals that you've assigned to the world. Let the Holy Spirit write a new meaning on the world, show you a happy dream, show you a unified perception, show you what it feels like to have unified awareness to, to only have one goal and one purpose and then to see that in everything and everyone. Another way of describing the goals you now perceive is to say that they are all concerned with personal interest. Since you have no personal interest, your goals are really concerned with nothing in cherishing them. Therefore, you have no goals at all. You do not know what anything is for. So it's beautiful. He's, he's not just telling us that we don't know what anything is for. He's telling us why it's ego goals, it's body identification, it's attachment to personalities. It's attachment to personal interest that are preventing us from truly seeing and truly having a sense of meaning in our life that as long as we're just putting ego goals all over the world that we perceive of course we're not going to be happy. We know our own best interest for happiness, peace and joy if we're just projecting ego beliefs and thoughts all over we're projecting false ego meanings and everything that we perceive. Before you can make any sense out of the exercises for today. One more thought is necessary. At the most superficial levels, you do recognize purpose. Yet purpose cannot be understood at these levels. For example, you do understand that a telephone is for the purpose of talking to someone who is not physically in your immediate vicinity. What you do not understand is what you want to reach him for. That's at the mind level. And it is this that makes your contact with him meaningful or not. Wow. This is an education in finding our true purpose finding our true calling in our mind our calling is to be happy our calling is to be peaceful joyful. We've been mesmerized and hypnotized by this belief system that we can learn things in the world can learn about images and and not only give names to the images the ego does. But then we can give me false meanings and how the images relate to other images. This can be done in in relationships and parent child relationships in in teacher student relationships this can be done in all the roles and standards and more of a society. It's all false meaning it's like a. It's a giant house of cards and none of the cards mean anything. It's a, it's a giant Lego building and none of the Lego pieces mean anything. And then when you give meaning false meaning and roles to to these images and then you decide how they must behave towards one another and what are the expectations in each one of these situations with these Lego characters that seem to be real people and real things going on, then, then you're not happy then you don't know your true meaning. So, with the phone analogy what do you want to reach him for, you know it's not enough to try to understand purpose at the level of form. What is what is the phone for what is the car for what is the house for, you know, what is transportation for what is food for, you know, what is air for what is the, what is the country for what you see all of these are just behind meanings from the past that seem to be meaningful in an egoic context from a sleeping deceived mind. But when you start letting go of these things and say show me my purpose. Show me how to forgive all this show me how to look upon the world with forgiveness then that will make the big change. First, we cannot really accept the forgiveness as Jesus and the Holy Spirit are teaching it, while we have a lot of false meaning from the past blocking the way. You know, we can't be have a pristine mind as long as it's cluttered. So, we're asking the Holy Spirit and Jesus to empty our mind of these false thoughts these false ego goals. It is crucial to your learning to be willing to give up the goals you have established for everything. When Jesus says everything he means everything. The recognition that they are meaningless, rather than both good or bad is the only way to accomplish this. The idea for today is a step in this direction, six practice periods, each of two minutes duration are required. Each practice period should begin with a slow repetition of the idea for today, followed by looking about you and letting your glance rest on whatever happens to catch your eye near or far important, or unimportant human or non human with your eyes resting on each subject so you so you so select. Say, for example, I do not know what this chair is for. I do not know what this pencil is for. I do not know what this hand is for. Say this quite slowly, without shifting your eyes from the subject until you have completed the statement about it. Then move on to the next subject and apply today's idea as before. What a precious idea. I do not know what anything is for. When you first do this lesson and you practice the lesson you may notice the ego may come in like what are you just gullible, what are you? Are you an imbecile, an idiot? Do you not understand anything at all? And this is part of the ego's tactic because it's the ego that has assigned all the false meanings to everything and it doesn't want you to unlearn the world. It doesn't want you to empty your mind. It doesn't want you to be still and know that I am God. It doesn't want you to go inward and release falsity and accept the truth and the light of truth. So there's a huge defense against these lessons and sometimes when I look at this lesson it just is a reminder of me. For me, I do not know what anything is for is that I want to be clueless about this world. I want to make clean the mirror of my mind so that the light can shine through it. I want to let go of all preconceived ideas and concepts. I want to have no idea what is going on. The ego fears the most is a sense of meaninglessness which we covered when we went over lesson 13, a meaningless world and gender's fear and then work with lesson 14. God did not create a meaningless world. It's not the violence in the world that's frightening. It's not the seeming transitory nature of the world. It's not the guns or the bombs or the wars or the famines or the storms or the hurricanes, the tidal waves, the floods. None of that is horrifying. It's actually a meaningless world in gender's fear. Now in this lesson, we're just being encouraged and being shown you want to see that this world is meaningless. You want to see that my meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world. These ego thoughts are showing me a meaningless world. You want to come to that admission because if you can come to that admission that you really don't know what's going on. And many of us have thrown our hands up it. I don't know what's happening. We've said that sometimes in our life. It's wild. I don't know what's happening. Jesus is cheering us on saying, yeah, yeah, good, good, good. Okay. Good. Now keep coming to me. Come back to the light. But you have to come to this admission. So I always like to make it really practical and what, what better way to make it practical for less than 25 then I opened an envelope this morning. Since I was away yesterday, I opened an envelope and in the envelope was a letter from my friend Dale, who is. He's in prison in, in Ohio. And see if I can find it on my, my notes here. There it is. Yeah, he wrote to me and I opened it up he wrote this type the letter to me on on the fourth of this year. And it relates so much to our workbook lesson of the day into the practical application of the workbook lessons, including today's lesson. For some of you don't know. I've taken some of Dale's letters. There was a session I did some years ago called, I think it was called escape to freedom. That's on YouTube and basically I had, he had handwritten a letter in in red ink, and I did a whole session on it because it was so touching and so wonderful for all of us and, and I know as you're tuning into this and you're practicing the workbook lessons that it's good to have practical examples it's good to have demonstrations of putting it into practice. And wow what a treat we have today because I'm going to go through this letter that Dale wrote. So again, he wrote this on January 4. David. Hey buddy. Here it is a new year, new beginnings exclamation. I began the course again with your commentary that Jeffrey Kosker has been sending me. Thank you. I remember when I first took the course. I had absolutely no idea what it was telling me. People write that into me all the time. But something deeper inside me said that this is truth and pulled me forward. I say pole because I have never felt like I had to push myself through this journey. I have known that something inside me was awakened, and the desire to pursue this path overshadowed everything else. Naturally through the years I've gone through the lessons, and they really began to make sense. Here recently, I've had some experiences with certain people coming into my awareness. People were grievances I've held on to some I never realized the block I live in. This is the cell block in prison. The block I live in. I'm the head porter. I take care of all the new guys who transfer into this prison and show them around, so to speak. Well, I was talking to my sergeant the other day, and this man is waving me down trying to get my attention. I don't necessarily recognize him, but he looked familiar. So I walk over to him and he says, you don't remember me, do you? As he says this, there was a sudden recognition. Keith, right? He hugs me, and we began catching up. As he's talking with me, I got emotional. My eyes became watery, and he stopped talking, asking me, what's wrong? David, this guy used to terrify me as a kid, 12 to 13 years old. He bullied me, humiliated me, and in fact became the big reason I became a boxer. I needed a costume that would hide all my dirt and protect me from ever feeling so weak and worthless again. Back then, around that age, I was seeking the attention of my real father, but he seemingly wanted nothing to do with me. So I tell Keith how he made me feel all these years, and he was in shock. It was a surprise to him because he passionately followed my boxing career and feared me. He feared me and admired me, and was actually proud of who I was and what I had become. Keith was also a close friend of my victim, Frank, Dale's in prison for killing, for murdering Frank. So here comes Keith, who was a good friend of Frank, and he was able to sit with me and talk through a lot of emotions. I realized in this sitting that for the past 47 years, I've been living through the perspective of a 12 to 13 year old boy. That this perception of myself had been frozen inside me and unable to ever grow up with my body. This perception of myself crippled my existence and essentially affected everything I ever tried to do. Boxing, making friends, dating girls, my confidence was shut. But a shift took place inside me, and we sat there this evening. These first four lessons made the shift, because if you really apply everything, the course is pointing towards. Nothing at all is really taking place. I'm not seeing anything but the past my own thoughts and feelings about Keith projected outward. Those unhealed thoughts about myself got healed tonight. My own thoughts, feelings and beliefs about me, my past with Frank, were simply being projected outward. It's been 35 years since I've seen Keith, and he gets transferred into the block I live in now. Beautiful exclamation points. You got to love how the Holy Spirit and Jesus orchestrate the healing. I understand it's not the form that matters, but how my mind sees the form and interprets it that matters. The fact that I still see forms indicates my mind is in need of healing. But you always say that spirit meets the mind where it's at, right? I think my mind needed to have this beautiful experience with Keith. I never even considered how he saw me. I only colored my world with how I saw myself. You know, I have a nephew who has a stuttering problem. My sister tells me he has no stutter at all when he does his music. It's as if he never stuttered at all. There is a man in here who also stutters when he talks, who just learned how to read. Yet when he reads, he does no stutter at all either. I have trouble expressing myself when I talk, especially with JC. JC is Jesus Christ and also Jeffrey Kosker in a lot of these messages, because Jeffrey is a mutual friend of ours who's had a lot of calls and correspondence and visited Dale in prison multiple times. I imagine I might with you also, but when I write, I can speak how I feel freely. And my mind allows me to flow. I always pray to spirit to use the signs and symbols in my dreams to awaken me. That's a good one. This is why I think there's such healing happening. He's praying. I always pray to spirit to use the signs and symbols in my dreams to awaken me. Me writing this letter is part of the dream. So is it impossible that I believe I have the same affliction as my nephew and the man in prison. When I write, I have no concept to protect. I'm not attached to how I might sound. I actually learn as I write because words come out on paper that I might not have said otherwise. Thank you for everything you have done for me, David, all of us in quotes. I love you, buddy. Sorry about my typing. I have to type one handed ever since my strokes always me. So we can see from this touching letter from Dale that that when you just pray for the spirit to use all the symbols, you know, how beautiful here. He's been in prison for, we'll say over, I think over 18 years and he's even been moved from one prison to another prison and then right in the cell block where he is as a porter to greet the new coming incoming inmates comes Keith, a man he has not seen since he was 12 or 13 as a little boy. And he's seeing, oh my gosh, I'm doing the lessons and these are my past thoughts. This letter is so helpful because when you look around the world from a sense of ego familiarity. You may be experiencing, you know, my house, my body, my hand, my, my life in the world, my position, my roles, my personality, you know, all these things that that are just simply the past past thoughts projected outward. This is as my meaningless thoughts are showing me a meanings world. And then when we watch what we experienced is just so we listen to Dale's letter being read. You can see what a great practice this is of releasing yourself from the prison of the mind from the prison of ego beliefs. The prison of false identity, which is personality and identity with personal interest and personal goals and personal strivings. Personal seeming gains and personal sufferings and seeming losses, the whole package of false identity exposed. So Dale is there showing us the way with Keith, as he starts to see, oh my gosh, this, I've projected Dale, I've projected Keith, the bully, I've projected Frank, I've projected everything that I'm experiencing, and these are my past thoughts. And so, it's just a good example of of workbook lesson number seven I see only the past, when we really are, are fully aware that all we're perceiving is the past, and everything that we're perceiving is equally passed. Then we're really on the track to open to the present moment. You have to first realize the extent of this world being over and done over and gone. And Jesus will just bring the characters in. In this case, 35 years later, for Dale, he gets to meet the bully that he believed bullied him when he couldn't get attention from his father his biological father and then he felt bullied by this man Keith and then Keith shows up 35 minutes later, you know, greeting him, saying I admired you, and I feared you. He admired follow Dale's boxing career, maybe ESPN, and quite a prolific boxing career and then also Keith confessed his private thoughts I thought you might come after me for what I did, did to you. Oh, sweet. This is like a sweet unveiling and exposing a private thoughts and and the healing that takes place is is immense it's for the whole universe. As we release our belief in past thoughts as we release our belief in private thoughts, then the whole universe is healed. Because the universe is is in our mind the universe is not out there it's it's in there. And when we give this false concept is false. And over to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit just shines it away and says, you've always been the love that God created you've always been the peace, the joy, the happiness that God created. You were just royally mistaken about your identity. So, you were in a case of thinking very small, you adapted to a littleness self concept that seemed to involve the whole cosmos and your little personality self and all the other personality cells, but this is not the reality of it. So if you have a chance and you want to go check out that YouTube where I think it's called escape to freedom, which is, I think a miracle morning episode that I did some years ago and very teary. We all had tears of healing and joy pouring down running down our cheeks I think during that, that episode and, and so much healing and then after I shared that the people that were watching at the time the broadcast and also subsequently people have written letters they've sent envelopes and stamps to be pen pals with Dale and yeah it's been my friend Jeffrey Kosker he's been visiting Dale, whenever he has the opportunity and comes over there to Ohio, and Kenneth price, you know he's he had a chance to go up and get in there and visit Dale and prison it's just been a flourishing prison ministry of miracles upon miracles and miracles but I thought I would give you a glimpse of how, when you practice these lessons, regardless of circumstances you know, we're talking about Jesus is a pencil and a, and a hand in this, this lesson but we're, you know, whether it's inside a prison cell or, or if it's someone that you haven't seen for 35 years, that was one of your biggest grievances and you hadn't even thought about the person, then the Holy Spirit will bring you up and use this, this perception in conjunction with. Yeah, I do not know what anything is for. So, thank you for joining in I wish you happy cluelessness today, because as you allow yourself to be clueless. You allow yourself to be guided by Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and if you really allow yourself to be absolutely completely clueless, then of course you allow for the bubbling happiness that comes from the Holy Spirit's purpose of forgiveness, which is in your mind. We're just able to see the false is false, able to see the past is past, able to see what's over and done is gone as over and done and gone. The past can touch us not right now. We are not the product of our past we are the creation of our heavenly Father, and we can enjoy that that identity with God as the Christ in this moment and reaching all the way to eternity. So thank you. Thank you for joining me. I do not know what anything is for keep that in your heart today. God bless you.