 For me, it's very much of a training or discipline of mind that we need to interpret a distraction as really a call for love, it's our own call for love, you know, it's calling us to come back. Anything can be turned around once you interpret it in a helpful way, so instead of seeing it as something that's negative or taking you away, it's just to recognize that that's one's own call, that's our call for love. And sometimes it's easier to recognize in terms of, with interpersonal relationships, there's someone who's angry or upset and you can think that they're calling for love, but when you're working with your mind and you feel that you're being distracted, then sometimes it's not so easy to just see that that's one's own call for love, it's a call to come back. In my practice, what I've done is when I've had thoughts that I really feel are distractions, my practice has always been just giving them over to the Holy Spirit and saying, this is my gift to you, I'm giving you all my distractions. And in a sense, I start to realize that I can't own them in the ultimate sense, I have to hand them over. And often things that can seem to be distractions when used by the ego can be turned around. So for example, for me, like there were times I know when I was a child and definitely during my teenage years where I used movies as escapism, I really would go to the movie theater to get away from my life. My life I considered was just dark and boring or frustrating and everything and I would want to go to the movie theater and just escape into another world. And I think I did that a bit with sports, different types of recreation, different types of entertainment. And when you get on the spiritual journey, you realize that the Spirit can use anything of form. So some of the things that were even used before by the ego as distractions get brought in line with the Spirit. I remember taking one of those early trips with Lisa when we were traveling across the country and she was really down on herself for smoking, smoking cigarettes. She said, how's that going to work? I think cigarettes are a big distraction in my life and I'm really critical and I have a lot of guilt around smoking cigarettes and everything. So you watch this trip we take, just watch, just give it over to the Holy Spirit and say take the smoking and you use the smoking for your purposes. When we would go to the Course in Miracles gatherings, we'd have the gathering inside and then a group would peel off. Often times the smokers would peel off and would go outside and they would have their little Smokeers Course in Miracles conference talk out there and she was marveling at how the cigarettes were being used throughout the whole trip. When we got out to, I think it was Kansas, we were staying with this man and his wife and his wife was going through all this trauma and everything and so Lisa went out back with her and lit up a cigarette, the woman lit up a cigarette that was a symbol for them to connect and join on all these things that the woman needed to heal. The cigarettes got used as well. So for most people we could think of cigarettes as a distraction but they're just symbols and the dreams, they're just dream symbols, they can be used by the Spirit as well. The movies for me got used far from escapism or escaped ego escapism, it was more like Holy Spirit escaped from the world you made escapism, the best kind of escapism, authentic awakening, which you're escaping the world of separation and you're being lifted into the miracle realms, into the higher realms of the mind, that's a good use for movies. Music, I think I used it to distract, when I was younger I would just want to close off for my parents, from school, from everything, put the headphones on and I think I just tried to dive into it and it wasn't all really inspiring, it had a little more of an achy breaky heart, all this stuff where you're wanting some music to commiserate with. That was not a helpful use although I did get in touch with a lot of emotions which was helpful, that helped me get in touch with a lot of sadness and hurt, abandonment feelings, rejection feelings, loneliness, the music helped me get more in touch with that and I had to, I had to get more in touch with my feelings so I could release them. Then as I went along the music became much more inspiring, uplifting, before I would go to work I would string together these cassette tapes you know with all these great inspiring music so I'd be flying as high as a kite when the car made it to work and I would use the music in very inspirational ways, not to hide but to actually bring myself into deeper alignment so that I would be energized whenever I would show up at work or show up to whatever. So I think it's all in the turnaround, it's not in labeling and judging things kind of as just distractions or negative but really just in handing them over to the Holy Spirit and saying you know I have used this in a way that feels unhelpful, I want to give it to you to use in a way that is helpful. Even education can be used all those years, ten years of university, I just had to just say okay you use it now, if there's any vocabulary or any words that would be helpful for your purposes then take it from me and use it and that's been getting away from it being a distraction. I know that the ego used just hiding out in college and university as part of a destructive device of hiding from the world at times but when it's given over to the Holy Spirit then it turns around in a very loving, glorious way. A volunteer in our community recently who was invited to this restaurant bar and was there for some hours and then kind of could feel the inner prompt went to stop you know with the drinking and then some more people started showing up and basically this this guy just crossed over he ignored the prompt you know like that's your last one he ignored that went on and on and on with it and then got drunk for the first time in quite a while he'd been volunteering with us for a while it had been an older pattern from earlier in his life he just kind of broke through into that got drunk and then it experienced like intense guilt the next morning over that like the big slip-up kind of thing and and then Jenny who's part of our community was just working with him saying well actually you have been advancing advancing advancing spiritually and now you're just coming to the point where you're starting to teach more you're just letting the Spirit pour through you and teach and more eyes are on you and because whenever you're teaching it's not the words that teach but it's your attitude and all your behaviors and everything rolled into one and so it was partly that there were people kind of looking to him looking up to him and so on and so forth and the guilt was ah messed up i just really got drunk but but really it's the problem is not in the form it's just when we get those little prompts there's always little promptings in our mind you know we can go so far with something and it's okay and then when we get that prompt and we ignore that prompt for whatever reason you know could be unworthiness could be anything underneath there that's where the guilt comes in and that's where it does turn into to a distraction a distraction in the overall context of things it doesn't do anything to the truth obviously but but it is a delay maneuver it's like an ego delay maneuver just delaying the awakening and so then you have to forgive that you know you get good practice at forgiving forgiving your mind for the delay maneuver as well