 The ego is a belief, and it is a belief that, you might say, it's a death wish, but being a death wish, it's a denial of true love, and so for it to maintain itself, it needs the power of the mind to believe in it. So that's why Jesus says, you made the ego by believing in it, and you can dispel it by withdrawing your belief from it. Now, how do you withdraw your belief from the ego? How do you take your mind's energy and pull it back away from the ego and devote it to the Spirit, to the Holy Spirit? It's really through exposure. If you have unconscious beliefs that you're feeding with your mind energy, and you aren't even aware of them, then it's talk about a parasite. It's in there just sucking the mind of all of its divine energy, and it's using all that mind energy to project out this cosmos. You know, it seems like a pretty vast cosmos. The scientists are still discovering new galaxies, new planets. It just seems like the stars just go on and on and on and on. As soon as we get a picture of how big it is, it's bigger, and it's bigger, and it's bigger and bigger. You know, it's, talk about a big bang. It seems to be a big bang, but it's a big bang that's meant to cover over a tiny puff, the big bang over the tiny puff. The more you go deeper with the Holy Spirit's help into the mind, what you will find is that there's not multiple egos, there's not six and a half billion egos. Each person doesn't have an ego of their own, it's just one ego. It's kind of like some of you might have seen Star Wars, the movie with Luke, and Darth Vader and everything. Remember the movie when he's got to go to the Death Star for Darth Vader and the Empire, and he's got to go inside this massive Death Star, which is a giant mechanical, you know, defense system, and he's got to go in with the help of Obi-Wan Kenobi with his little spaceship all the way to the center of the Death Star to make a hit directly on the power plant that runs the whole thing. Isn't that a beautiful metaphor of going in your mind and getting to the root of the ego? This is huge Death Star, and he's got to go in, and as he goes closer and closer and he's sure he can't do it. He's sure it's like, no way am I going to knock out the power plant of the Death Star with my little teeny spacecraft, then basically Obi-Wan Kenobi used the force. You can see how the Holy Spirit used the force. You're only going to do it intuitively. You're not going to do it with your five senses. So get your fingers off those instrument panels and get your analysis mind out of there because you're not taking out the power plant of the Death Star without the force. That's in that kind of metaphor, that's the Holy Spirit, use the force. So in one sense, you know, when we focus on no private thoughts and no people-pleasing, we're putting such an emphasis on exposure, you know, hide nothing, hold nothing back because when we hold something back, when we hide it, deny it, protect it or whatever, we're really doing it from ourselves. It's like playing hide and seek with yourself and it's like trying to trick yourself into maintaining the lie and this path is just saying, just expose it, you know, no matter what it is, just expose it and that's what forgiveness does. I mean, I've enjoyed it actually when I've been able to just have one on one with people where they just unload and burden their mind with their deepest, darkest, most crazy, bizarre, insane secrets that they've kept as secrets because they don't want to tell anybody because they're sure if they tell somebody some of these bizarre things that they've done that they'll be unlovable, that there's for sure rejection, for sure abandonment, you know, if I tell you my deepest, darkest secret, then you will never love me. And here we go again, the Holy Spirit turns the table and says, oh no, no, no, tell me, bring me your deepest, darkest secrets that you think you've done wrong, the ones that you're for sure are sins, the ones that you're for sure that you shall surely be punished for and the Holy Spirit's like, bring them to me and I will shine them away. I will show you that they have no consequence whatsoever because, again, you're not a body, whatever bodies seem to do wrong or right, you know, that's where the sin gets reinforced. It's like, oh, I know I did this, I know I did that, but remember the Holy Spirit is dismantling all the time and space and showing us that literally, literally we have never, as a being, as we were created, we have never done anything wrong or right, it's been our misidentification with the body that has just reinforced this feeling of sin, of wrongdoing, of somehow that we are wrong, you know, not that we've only done wrong, but we somehow are flawed and we aren't pure and the Spirit sees our purity, always. David, do we have to dig for that or can we just go, oops, when it comes up? You don't, in the end you don't really have to dig per se in the sense that I always say just going through life, I mean, every day it's going to come up and whack us, whack us in the face without digging for it, you know, it's going to, it's going to come at us, because remember the world is just reflecting what we believe, so we're going to get it, it's going to keep coming at us and coming at us and coming at us, I remember when I started, when I worked with the Course for a number of years, I would seem to get these bizarre scenarios and situations where people would seem to accuse me of something out of the blue and I would just think, this is really, will this ever stop? Well, this is just insane and then I read that part in the late in the text where he said, the role of the accuser will appear in many forms and will seem to be accusing you, but have no fear it will go at last. Just to read that line was like, ah, thank you, thank you for the hope that that line points to, that promise. And in one sense, you don't necessarily have to dig for it. I would say it's coming to more of a radical self honesty of whenever you get upset and you're tempted to point the finger or you're tempted to blame, that's where it comes down to this seeing it, this having to really take responsibility for it and realize that that the offense is not out there in the world, but to pluck the offense from the mind, from the consciousness, that's the whole point of the acting out is just to bring it back and say, what am I offended in? It's not Christ that is offended here. What am I identified with that is offended? And that, if you consider that digging then you could say that, but I consider that more just paying close attention to whatever the offense seems to be. But there is, there is people that go and shut themselves off in places and trying to do the dark night of the soul or, but if we just stay present in the mind watching, isn't that enough? And that what you're saying and that's enough? Yeah, I mean there can be guidance sometimes from the spirit if you, if you seem to be really enmeshed in something and a change in form like going off to a hermitage or something like that, if it would be beneficial at seeing something or exposing something it can have value. Like I know when I went off to the woods of Kentucky you know I was there and oh yeah right away you know I'm I think I was probably down there like three days down living in a little travel trailer in the woods of Kentucky and one of the first thoughts I had which I just laughed I said I'm addicted to water. I'm absolutely addicted to water. It's like the one of the first realizations growing up in suburban America and just assumed water, water, water, water, water and then when I'm down there with no running water that kind of gave me the awareness of how I'm really addicted to water. And then and then I noticed a lot of other things like I'm addicted to the idea of companionship. I'm absolutely you know again you know Jesus says you know you really believe that you are alone unless you are with another body. Yeah! Got me! Got me on that one too you guys. Yep. You know you start to so in one sense sometimes a guidance to a to a hermitage or something like that it not necessarily is a lifestyle but just even as a trial period can be part of the Spirit's guidance but it still comes back to what you were talking about the mind watching wouldn't do you any good to just go into the cage and not watch your mind you know you just probably be itching and damn bug, damn rock, damn tree you know I mean if you weren't watching your mind you'd probably just be projecting on to everything over there it's like I'm going back to my cushy bed my air conditioning and my pina coladas you know I'm just not not going to go for that but but if you start to realize when you're guided and you're paying attention to your mind that's a very beautiful thing regardless of where you seem to be oftentimes like when I traveled around the world I would just go where I was invited and you know I went through periods where I have offered to hermitage and living in travel trader eating bread and water and starved ego and doing all kinds of crazy stuff you try you try a lot of the stuff and it doesn't work and then you watch and watch and then sometimes when I was traveling one time I would just show up and I would get invited I was I was in New Jersey one time and this woman said come to my house and do like a course of miracles gathering and I said oh great so I went along with her she like lived in this massive mansion you know I've never seen anything so big she had this thing called an atrium I think the atrium probably had like two or three thousand square feet it had like a pool and everything just like the atrium on one side and then I said where you're made to sleep tonight she said oh you can come and sleep in this wing never slept in a wing before and sure enough it was it was like she opened the store and there was a wing and luckily she put me in the first bedroom in the first door so I didn't have to like go exploring the wing and try to find the bathroom you know and and but see that was part of mind training too you know you're dealing with a wing you've got to deal with a wing you know you've got to find your way around in the wing and and it's a different thing when you're down in the woods and you just you know in a camper you've only got so many square feet you know then you got to notice your thoughts and your reactions to elbow room and this and that or in my hermitage I had little I had little drapes and then I had cockroaches in behind the drapes and I had little I used candles and I just picture of Jesus with he was kind of sitting over Jerusalem you can see the lights of Jerusalem behind him and he just had his his hands folded on his knee like this very peacefully looking down over the lights of Jerusalem with his hands kind of laid one on top and it was very calming little painting I had down there actually this was the last time I'd seen it and I just went up to Canada and that's the painting they have at the peace house there it is from my hermitage back in the 1980s and there is hanging on Skye's wall up there in Canada but but it's just all mind-watching so in one sense with the spiritual community it's really you get a lot of opportunities to do mind-watching when you're in a community you know sometimes when you kind of hold yourself off kind of in solitude you can still do the mind-watching but it's just when you have a lot of mirrors coming at you from every angle then the temptation to project or the temptation to feel that somebody's impinging on your private space or your your personal zone or whatever you know can can be more intense that's still mind-watching