 And I'm Peter, I'm going to be the host today. And for those who are newly joining us, I could just let you know how the day is going to flow. So we are going to start with David showing a movie. And then afterwards we'll have a short break and then coming back we'll go into small breakout rooms to just share our experience of the movie. And then after another break we'll come back for our final closing session. So I'll just pass it over to David now and we can begin. Hi everyone. Welcome, welcome. So glad you can join with us again today. We have people from all over the world that are joining in. I was just, every time right before I started I just checked down the list of all the different countries. And so this is really a shared global experience with all of you signing in from so many different locations. And as usual we had our movie poll throughout the week to see what the topics and themes would be. That we would address for all of us for this beautiful awakening that we're going through right now. And the movie poll results were in English giving up the struggle of the split mind came in first. Second was attraction to idols illusions versus opening to the real world. And third was fear of surrendering to God's will. And then it was just reversed a little bit for Spanish. Number one as well was giving up the struggle of the split mind. And number two was fear of surrendering to God's will. And the third one in Spanish was moving through meaninglessness and disillusionment to find purpose. So the movie that we have today is going to really help us with those topics. As we really explore within our own mind and our own consciousness this journey toward the light to go deeper and deeper inside. And some of you have been coming every week. You can tell the recent string of movies have been very strong. We had Dark City. We had Fatima. What was our movie last week? Thomas Keating. Father Thomas Keating. Yeah, that was a good one. Because Thomas Keating felt a draw to the Catholic Church and to God when he was a child but didn't even tell his parents. He snuck off in the morning to go to church. And then later had this deep calling to join a monastery to follow a very religious life. And that was very inspirational. I received a lot of comments about how helpful it was to watch a movie about his life. And see the struggles and the challenges that he went through. And yet we could say in one sense the Spirit called him at a very early age. And he was called into his vocation of this deep inner life of prayer and contemplation. And maybe the biggest temptation he had was when he was sitting around just waiting to be drafted. And through the help of one of the people in the church, a leader in the church, he was able to avoid the draft and not be drafted and was actually told, this war is not for you. And that's one of those beautiful miraculous moments that was a key turning point in his life. And then he really gave himself over to a very devoted life to God. Today's movie is to help give you inspiration to give your life in a very devoted way over to God. And what I like about this movie is the main character who will be making the documentary and includes himself in the documentary. He became very successful in the world's terms. And he was an excellent student with a 4.0 grade average. He excelled in sports. He excelled in all the things that are available really as a youngster growing up in the eastern, east coast United States and then became a very, very successful movie maker, a director. And I would say that was one of his greatest skills was he had the skill of a storyteller. We know in all the great traditions, the Native American traditions and traditions all over the world, that storytelling is a very important part of passing on wisdom and passing on lessons to everyone in the tribe, whether it seems to be a smaller tribe or a larger tribe or a global tribe. And filmmaking, here we are all watching a movie together. Filmmaking was this man's area, his genre, his area of specialty. And where some are storytellers with verbal stories and some are skilled at writing novels and telling stories in that way. The theater and specifically movie making is quite an extreme form of storytelling. It seems very, very realistic. It's easy to really follow along with the movies because there's such audio visual experiences. And it's easy to lose track of what you perceive to be the world around you in the theater or at home while you're watching a movie. Because you get so engrossed, so engaged in the movie that you can forget that you're even watching a movie. And what I like about today's movie is that this gentleman I'm speaking of, his name is Tom Shadyak. And he's a Christian man, a very bright man who made movies. I think his first hit was with Jim Carrey, Ace Ventura. So we're talking comedy. I mean, that's wacky comedy. Some of you have seen Ace Ventura. It's wacky comedy, it really uses the skills of Jim Carrey very well. But it takes a great producer, a great movie maker to collaborate and bring those out. Because I think before that movie, basically Jim Carrey maybe had done some stand up and he'd done a few projects. But once you go on the big screen with your comedy, it can touch the lives of millions of people. And then millions of people did laugh at that movie. And then of course, he followed that up. Some of you might have seen the movie Liar Liar with Jim Carrey. That's a Tom Shadyak movie. That's really a good one. I think every time I watch that movie Liar Liar, I just see more things. So he not only gave himself over to making these big budget comedy movies, but after Ace Ventura they started to get a little more meaningful. Like Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty, Evan Almighty, some of the ones. These are like classics now in our movie watchers guide to enlightenment. So we have Tom Shadyak to thank along with Jim Carrey and a great cast of characters for taking some of these really deep themes. I would say spiritual themes and putting them in a movie and teaching them with comedy. That's probably the best way to retain spiritual concepts. If you are watching comedies and you're having your insights and your ah-has, that's the best. I can't think of a better way for it to really register in your heart and have a huge impact on your perception of the world. Now with Tom Shadyak, he is a good example for all of us because he followed along the conditioning of the world which was to strive, to effort, to learn, and to achieve and accomplish in a way that the world calls successful. It's always great when you see these young, these child prodigies in music and the arts and even in terms of spelling bees and all kinds of things. And their parents are supporting them and nurturing them and seeing them display their amazing skills. And certainly in the back of the parents' mind usually is how am I going to turn this into making a living? Because that seems to be the preoccupation on planet earth is how am I going to make a living? So many times you hear stars say, I love singing or I loved playing basketball in the backyard or I enjoy these different aspects of my life and then at some point the make a living at it comes in. In other words, you're supposed to succeed. That's the point is to not barely survive but to succeed, to have material success. And that's very much a part of the programming. I don't think really if you look at the teachings of Buddha or the teachings of Jesus or Ramana Maharshi, it really wasn't in there. You never hear Ramana going, now go out and make a good living and be the best that you can be in the world or Jesus never seemed to be encouraging people to succeed in terms of the world. I am calling you out of the world. That doesn't sound like an encouragement to succeed in the world. And to be told be still is not the most congruent thing with succeeding in this world. If we look at a course of miracles, I remember I'm so glad I just read the course on my own and I did share my miracles with my family and my parents but I didn't go home and go, oh I read a great section today, what is it? I need to do nothing. Boy, my dad would have had a field day with that one. He would just smile and he goes, yeah, that's what I was concerned about. You've now picked up a teaching that says I need to do nothing and now I'm sure you'll be a lazy, no good, dirty, rotten bum which was his great concern for me and he reminded me of that many times using just those words but it would not have been a good response. Be free, Jesus says I need to do nothing. That would not have gone over well in the household at all. What we have today is a movie of someone who has a wonderful family, he's raised with a wonderful family, he excels and he wins trophies and then he goes off and he moves to Hollywood and he becomes very quickly one of the most successful directors and movie makers that are out there. He became as known in Hollywood for his movies and his directing as fast as Jim Carrey who was the actor in his movies became well known as an actor. He rose to fame in Hollywood very quickly. In terms of worldwide acclaim, most people know the actor is better than the directors. Who's the director? Who's the producer? It's a Jim Carrey movie. Jim Carrey, Jim Carrey. The one that's on the screen that's in front of the camera is the one that usually blows up in terms of fame and notoriety and success. But as we know for any of you that follow along with Jim Carrey he's quite philosophical. He's also, along with those movies being very spiritually related I think that the actors that play in them, the Jim Carrey's, the Keanu Reeves Keanu is very famous for the Matrix trilogy but they are also reflections of questioning the world that has been presented to all of us and questioning the norms and questioning the beliefs and pondering is there something more than what this world shows us. So one of the most important things I think you'll get from this movie is that Tom Shadyak with all of the success that he has he will reach a point where he starts to ask himself the question, am I happy? I am progressing, I'm becoming more wealthy, I'm becoming more renowned, more well known and do I have a corresponding happiness that is coming along with all of this material success? It seems to be in this world that that is perhaps one of the greatest distractions to spiritual awakening is success as the world defines it. We grow up with this idea that to succeed is to accumulate whether you're talking about skills and abilities whether you're talking about intelligence whether you're talking about money or possessions or even in terms of having a family and children and how successful the children are all of these self-concept goals are part of a system that's made up by the ego to keep you from knowing who you are to keep you from the awareness of the I am presence but before time was as Jesus taught before Abraham was I am the ego has a great investment in you not experiencing your I am nature your spirit nature, it has a huge investment in fact it made up all of time and space it made up this world with one purpose in mind to keep you from remembering who you are as a perfect child of God so the entire system of time and space and its successes is designed to completely keep you distracted and searching in the wrong direction so Jesus says that many places seek not outside yourself for it will fail and you will weep each time an idol falls he does say at one point that you may have noticed that about every ego pursuit that you have followed when you have achieved it it has not satisfied you and that's why the ego is forced to shift to yet another to more goals more worldly goals to keep you from questioning the thought system that made up all this pursuit and all these external goals so the ego is quite clever and ingenious at just shifting the goal from one thing which does not satisfy to another which does not satisfy to yet another and at some point there is a disillusionment like what am I doing what am I following where I'm trying to pursue what I thought was good and right and normal to pursue and I'm not experiencing happiness with it so in this movie we have a beautiful example in Tom Shadyak where he pursues the ways of the world we'll say success and fortune and fame and so forth it does not satisfy him and then he begins to question he begins to question what is the purpose of this life what is the meaning of this world what should I be doing with my time what can I pour my heart into where I'll feel a sense of wholeness and completion and compassion and love he starts to ask some of the deeper questions that are so covered over by this whole world of time and space and I think that's important because we actually do need examples of those who have seemed to succeed and then they report back to all of us it's not what you think it is I've heard Jim Carrey actually say this quite a few times he said I'm glad that I seem to succeed the way that I did so I could see the meaninglessness and the unfulfillment of that success or that fame and now he says I can tell everyone else that this isn't what it seems to be the world is set up in a way that it isn't what it seems to be it doesn't bring what it's supposed to bring to us supposed to in terms of the ego telling us we can find fulfillment and contentment in the things of this world apart from our creator that is the biggest lie and this world was made as a defense against the light in fact a lot of times when we start talking about God this quote will come to mind the world was made as a place where God could enter or not it was made as an attack on God a place where God could enter or not and from that perspective you can start to realize that that's why part of the teachings in the chorus workbook is lesson number 128 the world I see holds nothing that I want this is very profound because as long as the mind is still seeking for something in the world or from the world it's seeking for happiness and fulfillment where it cannot be found and that's to say that God knows not form and that as you pursue the goals of form and the goals of linear time you are seeking for love in a direction in which love cannot be found you can find disillusionment in the world you can find heartbreak you can find greed and guilt and shame and lots of things you can find in the generated world of time and space not love love is within love is within your very being at the core of the being one of the early teachings from the text that really inspired me was it's impossible to seek for pleasure without finding pain and before this movie Jesus was turning that around and he's saying it's impossible to seek for worldly success without experiencing worldly failure basically the teaching is the same if you go for something of the world which the ego made then you will experience perhaps the illusion of success but also you will have the illusion of failure as well because these dualities, these polarities, these false idols are just designed to keep the mind distracted from the present moment so today we actually have a treat because Tom Shadyak we're going to follow his movie and the title of the movie is I Am so you can remember that that's a very well named movie the other movies were very spiritually oriented this one is extremely oriented towards this shift of mind from a mindset of lack and fear and future pursuits and the desire for material acquisition and accomplishment to a there must be a better way experience of coming to the I Am presence coming to unity coming to connection connecting with your heart in the most purest way coming to feel gratitude to feel this overwhelming sense of oneness with everything and everyone that's what this movie is about and what I like is it's coming from a man who tried it the world's way who succeeded on the world's terms and then put it into reverse and decided there has to be something else because he didn't experience happiness with all of the money and fame and success that he had he actually made a turnaround and said I'm going to make a movie attempting to discover what is truly meaningful and what is truly important I would say the two things that stand out in my mind that are helpful in this turnaround making the turn back to God back to the light in the case of Tom Shadyak I would say first he experienced a sense of disillusionment and I would say that everyone who goes on a spiritual journey at some point you will experience disillusionment where it just feels like the wheels fall off it feels like your life is in disarray you wonder what the point of life is you are disillusioned with what has been believed and what has been presented about this world and the second one for Tom Shadyak I think you'll discover is pain he will come across a period in his life that is intensely painful and this is a time that is so painful that he can't really see a point in living into a future living on it's so painful that he begins to question what is this all about what is the point thoughts of what has gone wrong and I think for many people this is part of the turn when you come to a place of extreme pain and I would say in the case with Tom it's extreme prolonged pain and out of the fertile soil of this extreme disillusionment comes an opening an opening heart, an opening mind some of you are familiar with Mary Baker Eddy and when I studied of course her famous work was science and health with key to the scriptures but she wrote prolifically and then when I looked more at her life she seemed to have a very hard life that had a lot of emotional pain and then went to a point of extreme emotional and physical pain for a long period of time and then at one point she fell on the snow and the ice and seemingly had so many internal injuries that they got her, carried her inside and basically a doctor came in to check on her and basically when the doctor left the room told her friends she's not going to make it she's a goner but actually that was her point of turning around where she reached over grabbed a Bible and she read the famous parable of Jesus and the paralytic where the paralyzed man had such faith that he got a couple people while Jesus was teaching in this house he got a couple people to get him on the roof to help him remove the tiles from the top of the roof and lower him down right in front of Jesus while Jesus is teaching and this paralyzed man had had friends lower him down after they took the tiles off of the roof right in front of Jesus when he's teaching and of course Jesus with all of his love he basically stopped everything because this was more important to him than the teachings and he decided to turn it into a teaching opportunity and basically told the paralyzed man arise and take up your bed and walk and the man did and everybody gasped that was in the house and that was the end of the teaching session that was the event of the day that just shows how powerful the mind is well Mary Baker Eddie when she had been told by her doctor she was basically going to die she reached over with a little strength she had she grabbed her Bible and she read that parable and then she got out of her bed and walked out and then the doctor and the friends turned white because they thought it was the ghost of Mary Baker Eddie coming out of that room but she finally tapped into that strength that power that love that is the Christ and she got up out of the bed and she taught it she spent the rest of her life teaching that love that strength so in that sense that's what I like about this movie this is more of a modern day movie a documentary made by a man who pursued success who achieved success and then became disillusioned and then went into extreme pain and then he rose up into looking for what is real and what is true he rose up in looking for connectedness for looking for our oneness for his desire to experience love it was so strong in him that he turned from his lifestyle he turned from his previous life he walked away from the table of Hollywood and he basically went through a very deep healing and ceased making movies until he did make a beautiful comeback movie on forgiveness called Brian Banks and if you haven't seen that I would write that down if you want a really good forgiveness movie you watch Tom Shadyak's comeback movie Brian Banks even when Hollywood turned their back on him he did not turn his back on his calling on his love and we need modern day examples of those who have renounced the world and who have said wait a minute let's stop what about love what about compassion what about the value of what's in your heart we need people who are witnesses of these core values because all of us are called into the I am presence and we're not all filmmakers but we can be inspired by one who is using his skills and his abilities as a great filmmaker to reach all of us and say remember remember what's important remember to follow your heart don't let the conditioning of the world that you seem to be raised in don't let that throw you off many of us we had parents who had expectations for us and part of those expectations they did want us to succeed I know underneath all the times that my father told me my biological father my heavenly father my biological father told me dirty, lazy, no good, rotten, bum get a job that was the spiel I know underneath it he just wanted me to succeed that's basically what he was he was like saying I'm going to tell you what I don't want you to be but what you are right now but please don't end up like this I want you to be successful I want you to really be successful and that's the world's conditioning we receive it from our parents we receive it from our teachers and as we grow up some of us we have some friends we receive it from some of those friends other friends we call forth they go chuck it all go for God but many of our friends are interested in university career making it in the world succeeding that's part of the mesmerism of this world that's part of the conditioning of the ego is to be a success at something succeed at something please and what Jesus is calling us to he's calling us to a state of being that we were created by God as perfect perfect spirit child of God he's just saying return to innocence he's saying return to the present moment return to the I am presence he's not even telling us we're supposed to mix with the ego or mix with the teachings of the ego he's saying to us go cold turkey on the ego and there's even a point in the course of miracles where Jesus says do not breathe life into your failing ego this is after you've you've spent years working with the course and you know you're dismantling and you're going through all kinds of healings and then just when you your eyes wander a little bit towards something in the world Jesus that's what he says do not breathe life into your failing ego he's like unplug that's what Neo was told by Troy at the beginning of the first matrix movie looks like you need to unplug Troy says that was the Holy Spirit speaking through Troy after he knocked on his door when Neo was sleeping at his computer and Jesus is saying the same same thing to us he's like you need to unplug don't try to make friends with the ego don't try to bargain with it don't be afraid of it but also do not breathe life into your failing ego I like it he's giving it to us straight so I hope you enjoy this movie as much as I do a lot of people have not seen this movie it's not like a very famous movie but this movie comes from Tom Shadyak's heart he is sending us a love letter with this movie he is offering us some a way to save time he's saying don't go through the mistakes I did you don't have to go through trying to succeed and then go through extreme pain he's offering us a way through his movie to save ourselves time and not be distracted by these ego conditionings that many of us were raised with from our childhood and we did not question them or question them deeply we simply went along with the programming we saw so many other people going along with the programming we figured we might as well too but actually that's not the most helpful thing so enjoy the movie and I will pop in during the movie and of course later on today we'll discuss this very deeply beautiful