 Hi everybody. Welcome. Good to see you. Welcome to our all-day movie workshop. I'm Peter for those who are joining you. And yeah we have a very large room with us today. Lots of people. We have those for our online retreat weekend. Some here from the Mystical Christ Academy and then others who are just joining here for the movie. So welcome everybody. So I can just let you know how the day is going to flow. We're going to start with David giving the movie commentary. And then afterwards we have a 10 minute break and that's the time where you can use our form to submit your questions and your prayers. And then David will hold the closing session with responding to your questions and prayers. So I'm going to pass it straight over to David now. Thank you Peter. Hi everyone. Yeah beautiful. We have a very very large group gathered from all around the world. We have our centers in Mexico and up in Utah. I'm sure my friend Kenneth is in there from Cincinnati. We're just we have a big group today and we're going to take a deep dive into into true freedom and happiness and joy. And all of that is just associated with the resurrection in our mind. Not a resurrection of a body but a resurrection of a mind that has been sleeping and dreaming of exile from God. That's what we've been praying for all along. And even though this is definitely Easter weekend and we know that these events from over 2000 years ago have been shared in many different ways that many different passion plays over the century. And of course I think there's well over 600 Jesus movies in existence. And it's really a focus on on the events that happened 2000 years ago during Holy Week. Palm Sunday and then yesterday, Good Friday, today, Saturday Jesus is in the tomb so to speak. And then tomorrow he he pops out like the Pillsbury Doughboy. He's he's out. He's resurrected. But you know what does that mean to us right now? What he was teaching it was a resurrection of the mind through forgiveness, giving up grievances. You know, he teaches us my grievances hide the light of the world in me. So anytime we have grievances or judgments or opinions, it just means that we're buying into a cloud of error, a cloud of false belief and false ideas that that cover over the light of truth in us that we are the light. But we've just covered ourselves and by believing in the ego, we put ourselves to sleep and we we need to wake up. So resurrection is all about waking up in the mind of remembering our divine mind, remembering that we're an idea, Christ idea in the mind of God. And it doesn't really have anything to do with form. You might say that that that skit was a skit that happened over 2000 years ago and and we're still learning from the teachings of Jesus. But that skit was just a relatively small part of his three years of public ministry and of his 30 some years of on earth. So that little skit that lasted maybe a week starting with Palm Sunday and ending up with a resurrection coming out of the tomb. That skit is a really small little slice of events in time and space. And the main thing as we go into this, I think we all have to have the right framework to really learn this lesson of resurrection. So before I get into this week's movie themes, and before I get into setting up the movie, I thought I would just dip in and read from the Course in Miracles workbook. And it's the workbook lesson 167. And the name of the lesson is the title is there is one life and that I share with God. And just the title, there is one life and that I share with God. There aren't multiple lives. We've associated life with the body. We think life begins at birth and ends at death. We think life is biological life. We think life is organic. We've given a lot of false definitions, but all of our definitions involve multiplicity and duality. And what Jesus is teaching us in this workbook lesson 167 is they're all false. There is only one life and that I share with God. Our workbook lesson if you're doing in the calendar of years, the workbook lesson for yesterday was I am spirit. And that's saying the same thing as there is one life. Spirit is life. Spirit is eternal life. And we could say that Jesus is a great way shower. And he's basically pointing us toward the remembrance of eternal life, which is the most important experience we could have. All of our time experiences, including birth and death, seeming death, seeming birth. These are very temporary little illusions, little wisp of memories that we have retained from the separation. And yet we act and react as if these are real images and that these are real events and occurrences that we're facing every day. I mean, if we were going to be really devoted and sincere, imagine every day if the moment you opened your eyes in the morning and you looked around the room and you went, oh, another day of hallucinating. That would actually be a really good way to start the day because then you would have things in perspective. You wouldn't be trying to accomplish your to-do list. You just start off with another day of hallucinating. And if that seems too radical for you, then maybe you could try something else, like, oh, eyes open, another day of worshiping death. That's a good one. Because because to perceive a fragmented world in place of spirit in place of eternal life and love and truth is basically to pursue illusions. And really the goal of our devotion to God is not to pursue illusions, but to relinquish illusions. And how do we do that except by seeing them as illusions? So that's why it would be a great benefit if you open your eyes in the morning before you get out of bed, before you brush your teeth, before you comb your hair or do anything, wash your face. Oh, another day of hallucinating. Oops. Maybe that's a good word to throw in there. Oops. Another day of hallucinating. Because then there's a context to say, I want eternal life. I actually deserve eternal life because I was created by God as eternal. And this game of images is it gets tiring sometime, you know, it gets tiring, it gets boring, it gets hard, it gets challenging. And all of those things are just coming from believing in hallucinations and almost having like a mirage every day and forgetting it's a mirage and going, Oh my God, the problems are starting already. Oh my gosh, what am I going to do here? Gotta keep my head above water. So this is what Jesus tells us in workbook lesson 167. There is one life and that I share with God. There are not different kinds of life for life is like the truth. It does not have degrees. It is the one condition in which all that God created share. Like all his thoughts, it has no opposite. There is no death because what God created shares his life. There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist. There is no death because the father and the son are one. Thank you Jesus for helping demonstrate that, giving us a glimpse of that. My gosh, without that glimpse, that could just seem like a perpetual darkness. In this world, there appears to be a state that is life's opposite. You call it death yet we have learned that the idea of death takes many forms. It is the one idea which underlies all feelings that are not supremely happy. It is the alarm to which you give response of any kind that is not perfect joy. All sorrow, loss, anxiety and suffering and pain, even a little sigh of weariness, a slight discomfort or the mirrors frown, acknowledge death and thus deny you live. Hot stuff now. That's hot stuff. That's Jesus Christ stuff. This is like big time free your mind stuff. I'll just say a few of those things. It's any response. You give response of any kind that is not perfect joy. All sorrow, loss, anxiety, suffering, pain, even a little sigh of weariness, a slight discomfort or the mirrors frown, acknowledge death. Okay, this death wish takes many forms. Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky. What? The mirrors frown, a sigh of weariness, a little discomfort. Jesus is saying there are no degrees to life, eternal life, and there are no degrees to error. Error is error. If you're an eternal being and you have a slightest frown, then what's frowning? Your body. The body's not the truth. So if the body's smiling or the body's frowning, it's just two different forms of death. And we're starting to say we deserve eternal life. That's our inheritance. If God created us eternal, then we must be eternal. There must be a fact if God created us eternal. You think that death is of the body, yet it is but an idea irrelevant to what is seen as physical. A thought is in the mind. It can be then applied as mind directs it, but its origin is where it must be changed if change occurs. Ideas leave not their source. The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to change your mind about yourself. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. It is truth established. Its truth established you as one with God. So that's a basic idea in A Course in Miracles. Ideas leave not their source. Christ is an idea in the mind of God and ideas leave not their source. The Father and Son are one. Fact. Christ remains as God created Christ. Fact. And then even with regard to this world in our mind, ideas leave not their source. So every time I have tied it to judge a brother or a sister, I'm just reinforcing the idea of judgment and separation in my mind. That's why Jesus said, judge not lest you be judged because if ideas leave not their source, if I have a judgment or opinion, then it's still in my sleeping mind. And I'm not going to wake up as long as I'm holding on and retaining judgments and opinions and grievances. So obviously Jesus is just saying, change your tune. Come on, sing a happy song like Stephanie has been doing. Sing a happy song. Sing a happy song. Every day, sing a happy song because we should be praising God and grateful for the oneness and the joy and the love that was given us in our creation. We shouldn't be doing a funeral dirge and yet when we complain, we're singing a funeral dirge. When we are critical, we're singing a funeral dirge. They have even Broadway shows. Come on, get happy. We have Broadway shows about being happy, about singing of our joy like the birds. When I listen to the birds, all I hear is happy songs. I really do. Occasionally, they're kind of like rock band, like Squawks. But most of the birds down here in Mexico, it's like a symphony. When I hear the birds in the morning, I don't need an alarm clock. I get a symphony of melodious birds singing, singing, chirping away. God is wonderful. God is love. So am I. So are you. So is everyone. I could just listen to the birds all day. So if we look at, we go to the next one, paragraph four, death is the thought that you are separate from your creator. It is the belief conditions change. Emotions alternate because of causes you cannot control. You did not make and you can never change. It is the fixed belief that ideas can leave their source and take on qualities the source does not contain, becoming different from their own origin, apart from it in kind as well as distance, time and form. So that's, that's what death is. Death is just the belief that you can be different than the creator. That's all death is. It's just the belief you can be different than the creator, different than spirit, different than eternal life, different than, than God's love. And so, wow, this cosmos gives a variety of images to show us. It seems infinite, but it can't be. It has to have a fixed number, but it seems infinite that we seem to keep looking upon the forms that are different as long as we believe our identity is different than the identity that God created us as, as the Christ. Death cannot come from life. Ideas remain united to their source. They can extend all that their source contains in that they can go far beyond themselves, but they cannot give birth to what was never given them. As they are made, so will they're making be. As they were born, so will they give birth. And where they come from, there will they return. So just to give you a summary of this workbook lesson, again, that, that whatever you're perceiving that you believe is different from you, if you think there's, there's a person, place, a thing, an object that's different from your mind, that's what projection is. You're just seeing things as if they're external to your mind. That's what projection is just like in a theater. The light goes through the film and then gets projected onto the screen. The world is just showing us what's in our mind. So we don't really have any reason to get upset with the world because it's just showing us what's in our mind. We should be grateful that the world is showing us what's in our mind so we can let go of, of unreal concepts. And then in the end, we find out there, all ego concepts, all of these unreal concepts are just a hallucination, a projection of unreal ideas. And then we don't really want to be content with, with parading around and masquerading and using a mask of, of false images and ideas. So today's movie, I actually feel is, is a spectacular way for us to really drop it. This movie will really help you drop it. Yes, I'm going to show a Jesus movie, probably a movie that some of you have never seen. It's refreshing. And this is going to be a Jesus movie unlike any Jesus movie you have ever seen, I guarantee it. Because this movie is going to be from the Roman perspective. Let's hear it for the Romans. We have not had a movie, a Jesus movie from the Romans perspective. That's fascinating. You know, we hear it, we hear it through the apostles and the, and the New Testament, the Gospels, but we have not really had a perspective on the crucifixion and, and what happened after the crucifixion from the Romans. So I will tell you, first of all, how do we come to this point of showing such a unique Jesus movie? Well, we start off with the themes that you all voted for. The first theme, which got the most votes is called Deepen in Faith. Spirit takes care of all things in time and space. Ah, that's what we need a movie from about Jesus from a Roman perspective that helps our mind deep in faith to the Christ. Wow, what a different twist. It's Saturday, so we're in the middle of Easter weekend. So Jesus is, he's throwing us a curveball today. He's going to give us the, the crucifixion and then the beyond the crucifixion, the resurrection from an entirely different perspective. Number two, in the themes, rise above doubt thoughts, no matter how they are reflected. Rise above doubt thoughts, no matter how they are reflected. Number three, keep expanding my mind, going beyond all perceived limitations of the world. Ooh, vast, going beyond all perceived limitations. Doesn't that sound freeing? Is anybody in here for freedom? Don't you like freedom? I love freedom. I'm all for freedom. I don't want those limitations off with the limitations. I cast off the limitations of the mind of my ego. Number four, give 100% of myself to given relationships. Given relationships, meaning the people that Jesus and the Holy Spirit orchestrate and send to me. Isn't it fun to give 100% of yourself? Give your heart to the given relationships. And when relationships seem to fall away, you know, in terms of the people leave or go, that's they serve their purpose. They're gone. We're here to use our given relationships. Let's hear it for mighty companions. We love those mighty companions. Flood my awareness with mighty companions. Send in the angels. Send in all the full support. I'm ready to blast off from the gravity of the ego and go soaring into the celestial realms into the light of heaven. And in the trail of my life, all my mighty companions go with me. We all go together. It's a joyful experience. So we got one more here. Number five, feeling alive in the Spirit's extension. That's it. I feel alive. I guess you can tell you have to feel the joy of lifting up and rising into joy. You have to feel the joy. Even before you fully rise into the joy, you feel the joy in the lift off. You feel the joy in the destiny. You feel the joy in this is my life's calling is to be happy and joyful. Truly, not because of some external events, but because internally I am lit up by Christ. I am lit up by the Holy Spirit. So the movie for today is a 2016 movie and the movie is called Risen. The theme of our workshop, our whole retreat is rise into joy. And the movie Jesus gives us for rise into joy is risen. As in, I am risen as a strong reminder. I am risen. Rise into joy is not a future prospect. I am risen is the acceptance of the resurrection right now. That's what we're going for. This 2016 movie, as I said, is unique in the sense that as the movie opens, the movie opens during the time of Jesus's crucifixion. But what I like about it is, as the movie opens during this time, we don't even see Jesus. We we are introduced to Klawius, who is a Roman tribune. And some of you have heard of Pontius Pilate, right? Pontius Pilate is the one who's the Roman ruler at the time in Galilee from the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar. And basically, Klawius is Pontius Pilate's right-hand man. How fascinating that we're going to watch a movie from basically the perspective of Pontius Pilate's right-hand man. I like it. Jesus, thank you for this. This is going to be fun. We're going to have a fun ride today with Klawius. And you might say that I think this movie has some pretty graphic points in it. I think this movie is kind of realistic of how things actually were. I know a lot of you are not necessarily historians or Bible historians. Before I came over here today to the studio, I was having a milkshake that Lisa had fixed me. And Lisa was fascinated because she's not really been a Bible scholar. And so she was asking me about why did the Jews hate Jesus so much if he was a Jew? And what about the Romans? What are they doing? How are they involved? Well, we're going to get to see in this movie all the political tensions that all of us perceive when we have looked at the world with between politicians and kings and queens and governments. And all of the frictions that you see in society are projections of the belief in the ego. Why? Because I have but one self and that I share with God. Why? It's because there is only one life and that is eternal life. So everything I perceive as the tensions and frictions of the human race and the human condition are just projections of my own belief in separation from God. Does that make sense? So in other words, instead of trying to find a political solution, you say, oh, it's a projection of my mind because I haven't accepted God's will and God's identity that he gave me. You see? So then it starts to get simpler. Like you watched last night from the monastery, you could see all those lovely beings at the monastery working through their intense emotions and then turning more and more to, okay, I need to pray. I need to pray. I need to say spirit, Jesus, show me the way because this personality self is lost. This personality self is wandering in the dust, wandering in time and space like that old TV show Lost in Space. It's a very difficult attempt at life when life is eternal and you're trying to make a temporary life that's make believe. It's fantasy. It's fiction. And we all know it can get pretty dramatic. It can get really dramatic when we're identified with the body's self. So in this movie, we are going to start during the time of the crucifixion of Jesus and we're going to basically start to see what's going on in Judea over 2000 years ago. It's a Roman occupation, just like Hitler tried to take over the world, just like Napoleon tried to take over the world. Well, actually, the British Empire, the Great Britain had control of many, many parts of the world. Some of accused United States of trying to be the policemen for the world, policing all the different countries, you know, okay, all right, world, you're going to use our currency, all right? Our currency is United States dollars and you're all going to live by it. And behave yourselves because if you don't behave yourself, we're going to send in the CIA and we're going to send in some operatives and we're going to make it our way. So this is a world of domination and control. And 2000 years ago, it was the Roman Empire. And Jesus, I was talking to Lisa, she was saying, so the Catholic Church, I said, no, the Catholic Church comes much later. This is a military, powerful world empire and they basically are controlling Judea. So the Jews are very proud people. They have a lot of tradition. They're trying to live according to Yahweh and Jehovah and live according to the Torah and really live a godly life, trying to really get to know God. But they're occupied, their Galilee is completely occupied by the Roman Empire, along with many other countries. So there's a group of Jews called the zealots who say, let's get rid of the Romans. We don't like to be occupied. It's similar to what's going on now with Ukraine and Russia coming in invading and the Ukrainians are going, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, this is our country. Come on now. We don't like being controlled and dominated by another country. This is our country. You can imagine it's the same emotion, the same passion. But even though we've heard a little bit about the zealots, we're going to see graphically that they are not happy at all with the Roman Empire. And we're also going to see from the Roman perspective that it's hard to control people from another land. It's hard to go out and conquer lands and control people. We can tell that from our own personal lives. Does anybody in here tried to control somebody at one point of your life? How did it go? Wasn't it a disaster? It was for me. It's a complete disaster. I was like, oh, man, this is a lesson in humbleness. You can't really control people. In fact, we think we would like to control our own body, but Jesus says actually the body's part of a script that's already played out. And when you try to control your weight and you try to control how beautiful you are and try to control the body, when you try to personally control the puppet, it's not going to work. You're going to feel guilty, afraid, sad, and you're going to feel like you wanted to just give up. And Jesus is saying, good, give up. Let the puppet be under the direction of the Holy Spirit, and then your mind will wake up. But don't think you can control any people, even the person that you believe you are. You're not in charge of that one. There's a lot of guilt of believing you're in charge of your puppet. You might have mom guilt or dad guilt. You might have family guilt. You might have ancestral guilt. It's all coming from the ego belief that you can control the puppets. But the puppets are part of a prearranged script that's already over. It is over. And all we can control now is the direction of our thinking. We can either choose to think with the Holy Spirit or think with the ego. And that's it. That's all we have left. Thank God that's all we have left. And that's why we're always training our mind to think with the Holy Spirit and Jesus, because that frees our mind to return to its natural state. So in this movie, you're going to see some pretty graphic scenes. I mean, it's not only that the zealots are going to be fighting against the Romans who are Romans are trying to control Judea. Zealots want them to be gone. But when people are out of line, then they don't go to court necessarily. They just, they usually get crucified or crucified upside down. How's that for a quick consequence? You're out of line. Get over there. You're going to get crucified upside down or crucified. It's a pretty strong system of, you might say, control and punishment and behavior. And so Pilate, we're going to learn a lot more about Pontius Pilate, is he's serving Julius Caesar back in Rome. And he's pretty much concerned in this movie because some of Caesar's spies are coming to check on how things are going in Judea. And he does not want the spies to come and go back to Julius Caesar and say, Pilate's not doing a good job. They're wild. They're out of control. So he's got pressures, self-concept pressures from his superior, Julius Caesar. And we'll see in this movie that our main character, Clavius, is, he's a tribune. So he's a right-hand man. And he's basically kind of like a general for, in terms of the troops and being in charge of the troops. And he's serving Pontius Pilate. And the more we start to go into Clavius's character, we start to realize that even though he's good, he's strong, he's a great warrior, you know, he's really trying to just serve. We're going to find out that deep in his heart, he wants peace. And Jesus is going to reach him. This is one of those great movies where we see Jesus reaching the heart of a Roman tribune and, and winning over the heart of a Roman tribune and soldier. Now that's got to be a treat. It's one thing to try to win the apostles' hearts. It's one thing to try to win Mary Magdalene's heart. It's one thing to try to win the heart of a few disciples who actually get quite frightened by the events and are more hiding during this movie because this is the crucifixion of Jesus. So they're hiding for their lives and trying to avoid the Romans and trying to avoid the Sadducees and the Pharisees at all cost. But to me, as Jesus says, one heart that turns toward the light is worth everything. One heart that's willing to open up to know the Christ is worth everything. It's not a matter of quantity. We're not here to try to win souls like out of like look at 7.8 billion souls. And I think we've got to go out and preach on the street corners to try to win souls for Jesus. We're here to let our soul be free in Christ. That's what the goal is. This isn't about numbers. That's what I like about this movie. I like show me a movie where one Roman tribune turns to Christ and I'm going to cry because I'm going to go, oh my God, if this soldier can turn to the light, then I have no excuse. I must turn to the light if a soldier can turn to the light and turn away from battle and all of the darkness of the world. That touches my heart. That's why I cry when I watch this movie. Second thing about this movie, there's a scene in this movie like no scene in any movie that you've ever seen before. You're going to be, whoa, you're going to feel the awesomeness of this scene because this is the scene that is about transformation of perception. When Clavius sees Jesus as dying and dead, that image goes in his mind. He's dead and gone. But when he sees the risen Jesus, that throws his mind into a change of perception that he can't understand. And you can hear that from the monastery talk last night. A lot of the people were sharing how they were having shifts and changes and openings and prayers like they'd never seen before. They didn't even expect that to happen. It just miraculously happened. And this is going to be, I think, one of the most powerful scenes on the big screen because you're going to see a Roman tribune faced with something that he would not have predicted in a billion years, a risen Jesus. That is something that is going to strike his awareness, strike his consciousness in the most amazing way. Every time I watch this movie, I almost have to stop because it just kind of takes my breath away that one scene can change our entire outlook on life. Our whole perspective on the world and everything can be changed by one experience. And that's what we're praying for. So you're in for a major treat today when we get to the point where Glavia sees the risen Jesus. That is a powerful, powerful moment. So I will pop in from time to time. Enjoy it. You're going to be going on a journey today feels like we're actually being taken back 2000 years because these events, we can see it from the Roman perspective. It's a pretty intense time. Politically, it's intense. It's intense for the people. And we have the Sanhedrin who are kind of like trying to hold on for dear life to their rules and regulations and theology. And Jesus, his teachings were kind of the upstart. They, the Sanhedrin are threatened. The Romans are threatened. Everybody feels threatened. And everybody starts going into major protectionism and major people pleasing and a wild attempt to protect the past. And then the light of Christ comes whooshing in to say, no, that's futile. Give up. You cannot protect yourself from the light because the light created you and you are light. So all you can do is surrender and give in to the experience of the light. Enjoy the movie. I'll be in from time to time and we'll have a beautiful question and answer session at the end.