 Okay. Hi everybody. Welcome. So good to see you all. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, we've got a beautiful online retreat weekend ahead of us. So I'm Peter. I'm going to be the host this weekend. And yeah, we have the theme heralds of eternity. So it feels like a beautiful theme just welcoming in the light into the mind. And yeah, we have, we'll have a few different sessions this weekend. So this evening we'll have Kirsten and Jason and music too. And then we'll have the movie workshop tomorrow. And then today to start with, we're going to be joined by David Hofmeister at the monastery in Utah. And we have Francis Zoo here with us in Mexico. So I'm going to pass it over to them now. Hi, everyone. Hi, Francis. Hi, David. Hi, everyone. Such a cozy way for us to talk about heaven and eternity and the heralds of eternity. What a title, what a theme we have this week. Pointing directly to heaven. It's beautiful. It's kind of like if you imagine going to the ocean and you're standing on the beach and you have a choice whether to look at the ocean or turn inward and look at the land, the, the trees and the buildings and the people. We're talking this online retreat weekend about heralds of eternity. So the ocean is kind of a symbol of, of endless water, no beginning and no end. It just circles the globe whereas it's punctuated by little continents we'll say of land. And to turn away from the continents and turn yourself toward the expanse, the vastness of eternity. That's what we're all about today. So Francis and I have been had a little chat. We just had a happy chat before we started of just our joy at, at this calling. Yeah, it feels, you know, like 2000 years ago when Jesus called each and every one of his disciples to follow him. Disciples means, you know, followers really. It feels like he's still doing the same thing today because each and every one of us just basically saying, follow me, follow my teaching, follow a pathway that I point to you because I'm going to take you there. Just follow me. And I really feel this, this is really our life is about. And that's the purpose of every single time when we come together is to remind ourselves. Yes, we said yes. And it's like Matthew the disciple, I remember in the chosen series, he just walked from his, because he was a text collector, he, he just stood up, walked away from his desk, walked out of the gate. And that's, that's the his reaction after he heard Jesus saying, follow me. It's like immediate, no goodbye to, to his career, no goodbye to his, just, and I feel that kind of joy inside. When Jesus Christ calls us, say, follow me right now. Yeah, this is so much joy. Yeah, I think all of you who, who've studied and practiced the Course knows that, that Jesus uses a distinction. And he says, you have a right mind, which is where the Holy Spirit abides, and you have the wrong mind where the ego abides. But when I was thinking of the title of this, this online weekend, heralds of eternity, it reminds me of a quote that Jesus made where he said, the time and eternity both are in your mind and they will conflict until you embrace one and let the other go. So obviously, if time and eternity are both in our mind, and he's saying, why don't you embrace one and the conflict? Because it's a very sharp conflict. Time is broken up into seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years and so forth. And eternity doesn't have such distinctions. Eternity is just pure light, pure love. It's called infinity. It's called eternal life in the Bible. And so he's saying time and eternity will conflict until you let one go. And of course, he's encouraging us to let go of the time and to embrace the eternity. Because Jesus awoke and he realized that the eternal life was actually real. And the temporary sequencing of time that we call the cosmos, the linear time space cosmos, was an invention that actually wasn't real at all. So occasionally, he uses a strong word, even a psychological word in the workbook. At one point, he says, hallucination may be a better word. He actually tells us that what we're perceiving through our five senses is a hallucination. Recently, I went to see a movie that just came out. It's called Don't Worry Darling. And again, another movie based on simulation about being tricked into a simulation. And the simulation always involves hierarchies and control. It always involves attraction, repulsion. And I think for me, it wasn't just coming into the teachings of a course of miracles. But I was so curious about how do you practically live the teachings of a course of miracles? That was my biggest question. How do you live it in the present moment? How do you live it in your daily life? So I don't know. Some course teachers and students don't do this, but I went digging through all the lives of the mystics and saints throughout history to read their journals. Some of them didn't even consider themselves a saint. I was reading Gandhi. He didn't really like the term Mahatma because the term Mahatma meant great soul. And Gandhi said, please, I'm just in process here. Don't call me Mahatma. Listen, there's plenty of others you can call Mahatma, but I'm just trying to do the best I can here and live a nonviolent life. And I'm not the Mahatma. But I read his autobiography to see what was he struggling with? What was he wrestling with that he was against being called Mahatma? Also, I read the autobiography of St. Francis because St. Francis was dealing with intense shame and guilt and fear. And I thought, this is good. He's trying to follow the Gospels that Jesus laid down. And he's really giving his whole heart to it. He's left his family. He even went to the Crusades because he thought he was supposed to go fight and kill Muslims. But then he kind of had a big fever after he went to the Crusades, which, of course, the Bible says thou shalt not kill. And if you're spending your time on a horse trying to kill people, it's a pretty big contradiction. So St. Francis had to go through a lot of compromise and people pleasing. He did with his parents, with his church, with his community there in Assisi. So I think what Francis and I wanted to talk about too a little bit today is that we're both interested in the practical application of living this experience more so than theology, more so than philosophy, more so than education, more so than just kind of a theology. Because Jesus is saying in the Course there is no universal theology, but there is a universal experience. And he's encouraging us to go for the experience. If you find things in theology or metaphysics helpful, great. If you find things in psychology or education, poetry, the poetry of Rumi or Kabir helpful, great. But what our focus is, as we're talking about the heralds of eternity, is we're focused on a direct experience. We're not focusing on the concepts. We're not focusing on the scaffolding because the Spirit can use lots of different scaffolding. There's many pathways to God. And we're not even saying that there's anything completely unique about a Course in Miracles because as soon as we make something in form like a book unique, then we have to say, but I would rather have the direct experience than call the Course in Miracles a unique path. You see, I don't want to have pride in a Course in Miracles. I rather have a direct experience of who I am as the Christ. And I want a direct experience of God. So in the end, that's why Lesson 189 says, forget this world, forget this Course, and come with holy, empty hands unto your God. You know where Jesus is going with this. So we're just a band of seeming people around the world who are like focused on the experience. And Francis, today, you know, you brought up, you said you were guided to go and I think it was the real alternative section in the text, which is pretty far back in the text. But maybe we should talk a little bit about that because I think of all the references you could have been guided to in this big book of 31 chapters and a manual for teachers and a workbook, the real alternative section, it's something, a line jumped out when you were reading that. Yesterday, I was reading it asking for praying for a message for this retreat. And that's where the real alternative section, I was guided to read it. And the thing is, you know, like David was saying, we are aiming for an experience. And Jesus says, you know, even religion at the highest level is an experience. Psychology at the highest level is an experience. So they're the same. At the highest level, it's all come down to a real experience with God, direct experience. And that chapter, when I was reading, I was looking for a message that points to the direct experience. And yet, as I was reading, all that Jesus was saying is, give up this world, give up this world. And he says all the pathways of the world leads to death. But that is not the lesson. Because if we stop there, it feels such a depressing lesson. But that's not the lesson. That's the beginning. That's the beginning of the real lesson. But that has to be, has to be the beginning. You know, without that, you can never pass that point to the real alternative. So I read and read and read. And I thought, okay, what is the real alternative? Very, very minimal. No mention, hardly any mention at all, because Jesus saying the real experience would come to show you. But your part, your part, that's, let's just talk on and on about your part is not seeking for the real alternative, but let go, let go of what is not it. Keep, stop hoping for just something here, another choice of the same thing, another form of the same choice. Give it up. That's the whole session was on and on about. So I thought I have this real message gained from reading it was that yeah, the direct experience cannot come unless we willingly let go of what we value. That is not God. That's not eternal. That's the real message there. Yeah. And the ego has made up this whole world of time and space out of one concept. And of course, the ego is the belief and the concept that this entire world of time and space is made up of is sacrifice. So what do I mean by that? Well, when the mind felt, seemed to fall asleep and it became accustomed to this projected world of time and space. It thought that the world of time and space was reality and that God became the unknown. Remember, there was an amnesia. God was forgotten. So God now becomes the big unknown. And this world becomes the known. And Jesus is just teaching us, you got it backwards. God is the known. Heaven is the known. And this world is unknowable. He's saying, I'm not asking you to give up something real. I'm asking you to join with the Holy Spirit to see the unreality of this world in its entirety. That anything that you are attracted to in this world can hold your mind back from waking up. Anything that you are repulsed by in this world can hold your mind from waking up. The Holy Spirit sees the world as neutral. The Holy Spirit is kind of like neutralized the world. And therefore, the symbols are just like leaves blowing in the wind. The Holy Spirit can use all the leaves to help your mind unwind. But the Holy Spirit sees nothing positive or negative, valuable or valueless about the world in the sense that basically there's nothing to attack or to fight against, and then there's nothing to pursue. So I found that when I was reading the Lives of the Mystics and Saints, that's what I found Gandhi had in common with St. Francis, with all the Mystics and Saints, Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, all the modern-day mystics. I saw that they basically didn't really hold a value for time and space. They were more into prayer and meditation. They were more into stillness. They were more into laughter, joy. Some of them had very short lives like St. Teresa of Luzu. She had a very intense short life, went into the convent with her sisters when she was 15. Basically, the Pope had to let her in because they didn't let 15-year-olds become nuns. So she had to get a special permission from the Pope to even become, and then when she got in, oh, she devoted herself so much to the present moment that she's the best kind of nun you could ever have. She died pretty quickly, too. She didn't need a lot of time in the convent because she was going so much for the present moment that she wasn't here to dilly-dally. She wasn't here to dilly-dally with time and space. She just went right for the simplicity, right for the heart of Jesus, which is the goal for any monk or any nun. Just go for the heart of Jesus and let go of everything else. So part of what we'd like to talk about is that's the way it's gone in our experiences, too. I was inspired by the mystics and saints, and then after five years of study and practice with the Course, then Jesus took me on the road because Jesus says, basically, he was saying, you still believe that a house offers you shelter and security. You still believe that you're in control of money and food and exercise. You still believe you can run some aspects of time and space, and Jesus was saying, I'm going to have to take you on a ride through a set of experiences that will free your mind from believing that food and shelter offer you security. So, of course, travel was a big thing for me because when you're on the road, you don't know where you're going to sleep from night to night. You don't know where the food's going to come from. You don't know how the transportation's going to even work. When you put Jesus in charge, he does a power rinse of the mind, and he says, your only reason you're suffering is because you believe things about yourself and time and space that aren't true. God did not create the laws of economics. God did not create the laws of nutrition. In Lessons 50 and 76 in the Course of Miracles, he lays out everything that God didn't create. He says, these are all ego beliefs, and they don't belong in your holy mind. You're actually going to be joyful and free when you transcend these egoic laws and beliefs because the law of love is the only law that there is. There is no other law than love. Gravity isn't even real. Gravity isn't even real. But to earthlings, that seems like a pretty solid law, but so do the laws of actions and reactions and the laws of chemistry and the laws of physics. But once we get into quantum physics, it starts to sound a lot more like Jesus' right that these laws of past, the present, and future don't hold up when we don't hide them. When we let them up to the light, they actually disappear. And Jesus says, when you listen only to the Holy Spirit, you will have dominion over the world. That's why he said, be of good cheer. I have overcome the world is because if you only listen to the voice for God, you literally must transcend the ego beliefs of time and space. Now that's pretty