 One of the quotes from the course that I really like is love Cannot be far behind a grateful heart and a thankful mind So that just kind of rolls out. You know, it's like whoo. It's the love that we're all Seeking to know that the course tells us it's It's literally beyond what can be taught but we can work at removing the obstacles to the awareness of love's presence And so that's really where our focus is and then as you clear the mirror of your mind from the attack thoughts And judgments and grievances then the gratitude is there It's not like something you need to have more of it's just like it's already there Ready to radiate and shine just as you You know who you are is just a grateful presence a grateful living presence, but it's just covered over By these judgments and grievances and attack thoughts so So we'll talk quite a bit this weekend about about removing those grievances and judgments and we'll also talk about About the trust that it takes to do that Because as long as you are trusting in the ego then you are Reinforcing or we might say perpetuating judgments and grievances but when you withdraw your faith from the ego and You give it over to the Holy Spirit then naturally those Grievances and judgments start to fade away and they become less and less in your awareness So faith is not really a question of more or less faith. It's really what am I putting my faith in and We're going to be all about exposing the ego and and really pulling our faith away from the ego And putting it into the spirit and that would have to transfer to to all aspects of our mind including things like sometimes people think of Finances and relationships and there's various aspects of the human condition that it seems to be Well, I can pray to God for certain things, but there's certain things I can run a little bit better than God So I'll run them on my own and we find that doesn't really work You can't really run some aspects of your life That control of trying to be in charge of certain things is where the problem is so it progressively takes a lot of faith to start to transfer the training and Yeah, it's for me is it becomes An involuntary life in the sense that miracles are involuntary you you really do give over control of your life and the direction of your life like after this week, I'm heading to China and last year I went to China for the first time and Yeah, I was telling Francis because she was asking me and I said no I'm definitely not feeling China not feeling China and then we we got this Email that from a friend of ours in China who just said oh Tomorrow I have to talk with you on Skype. It's so important It can't be done over the email. It's it's a big surprise It's just big news and everything and so we waited the next day we got on Skype and and he told the story of of Meeting of course a miracles meeting over in China in Beijing where they were discussing the possibility of me coming and And there was one gentleman who heard that possibility and just started jumping up and down like a Mexican jumping being all over the room and The people just got really curious when they saw this man jumping all around and Like who is this there suddenly was this great enthusiasm for me to come and visit China just because this man was jumping up and down and When we heard the story it was so touching our hearts were so touched by this that were like Okay, we're going to China And it was just really glorious The people were just so open and warm and you know, that's where we're heading after this little trip here in northern, California But but you know, it's you don't really Have a sense of control over your life when you give your life over to God You just are willing to be used in any way and that is really gorgeous It's beautiful when did you just kind of get into the rhythm of that and the flow of that? So this weekend will be a very very practical weekend I want you to just raise up any kind of questions ask for examples if we talk about some principles and We use some examples and you say Still don't get it. Give me another example. Try another example or Come at it from another angle whatever whatever it takes our goal is to have clarity and to Go deeper and deeper into that peace of mind. That is our natural inheritance. So that's really what What guides these gatherings? It's the it's the question from the heart. It's the deep desire for healing It's the part of our mind. It just says, you know, there must be a better way I'm willing to just fall to my knees and be shown, you know, the prayer of the heart is really revealed to me my greater good revealed to me my true self my true identity and we just open up and we go deep into that prayer and That becomes our living practice Recently, I've been saying that the spiritual journey is like it's over 99% practice and it's 1% or less principal Because I think a lot of us are really onto the principles, you know We've been on to those for some time, but the actual Practice of that and the transfer of that to all aspects of our life. That's where I think we can come together and really help each other By showing each other the ways that really work the ways that we found that really work so we have Some music we're gonna play this weekend. We also have the beautiful TV screen and some video clips My friend Jason Warwick is actually working today on a new little Video montage, so we always we have a little movie making going on Simultaneously while we're starting here Friday night and we should be able to have a few montages I think that that come in that are help us out as well so I just wanted to welcome everyone and I'm here at your service to join with you over this weekend and to really answer your questions and and As I said go into this in a very careful way just to really really Come together with this experience this experience a piece of mine so for me it's Life is like they say life's a bowl of cherries, you know life does feel like a bowl of cherries. It feels like there's just Being carried along and swept along in this Joy and clarity and then when we come together We we share it Always like to share that you know that from my awareness there really aren't any real problems And so oftentimes I come together with groups as I travel around the world and and we'll start off with with this idea as anybody have a problem and then we we work it back to You know really take a close look at this like is this a real problem or is this a problem of linear time a problem of imagination? where our we've run away with our ego imagination and we've we've fantasized a lot of problems when we really cut down into the Core of it towards the present moment. We really start to see we don't really have any problems That's it's easy to stay happy when you have no problems So that's what we're working on here. You know is really working it back that way So I just want to open it up to everyone. I'm here at your service to to dive into things and It's just fun. I'm really grateful being here again Anybody have any kind of topics or things they'd like to look at tonight It does feel like As we go along and we start to open to any kind of guidance and tuition that that where we have all these past ideas of of what we should be doing and We have a lot of oftentimes people who are willing to give us a lot of advice and put their two cents worth in and so forth with all these things and and And inside we have to really start to follow our passions and also our peace of mind in terms of what feels right and What we seem to be doing in the world is really a backdrop for this mind training At times we're going through some very very intense periods of a lot of darkness coming up and a lot of unconscious Emotions that are surfacing and It will seem like on the script. We're kind of pulled back. We get a little break We get a little a pre reprieve from working or we take take time off either voluntarily or sometimes being laid off and so on and so forth, but it gives us time to To work through these emotions so what seems to be going on in the script of our life and the dream world of our life is is just a backdrop to kind of work through those things and We know it we've grown up with goal-setting and trying to achieve and master things and accumulate and so on and so forth and the spiritual journey is really taking us in the other direction it's more of a like in that movie I heart Huckabees it's more of a dismantling of everything that we've known and We we may go to gatherings like this or we may read books, but it's you know Sometimes we have these existential detectives like Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman and other times We just have people that that act or dogs that I come into our life so it's in one sense It's like we've done so much to try to Make it in the world and in one sense the spirits helping us kind of backing us you know deeper and deeper into our consciousness and into our mind and In this backing in we're just really stepping back from putting so much importance on The things of the world. We're trusting that we'll be taken care of in ways that we can't imagine So we're not putting so much emphasis on trying to figure things out But more wait for things to show up Wait for things to be given wait for things to be obvious and that's a whole new mode of being a whole new way of being and Learning to relax with it. You know just to learn to see oh, I'm taking care of oh, I didn't see that one coming Oh, that's kind of nice for me. That was the biggest Difficulty was letting go of what I thought I knew of How I thought it was supposed to go and even in terms of taking care of myself Which you know that was part of the conditioning you you take care of yourself Look out for number one and so forth now. We're we're being taken back inward to the one That we truly are and it's just step by step by step So for me there was a lot of trust involved in letting go of trying to Plan for myself or trying to run the show trying to be in charge It's not that we become completely passive in terms of behavior but it's more in a mental state of receptivity that we're cultivating so when the spirit speaks to us it gives us those little nudges You know we can pay attention and go for that because we were taught that we there are times to be Defensive there were times to be aggressive There were times to Really stand up for ourselves and yet the self that we were standing up for was still an ego Self of false self. Yeah, so it's like we're just stepping back