 So having preferences is having this ordering of thoughts going on. Yes. It's a sure sign. Yes. If I've got preferences that I'm ordering my thoughts in ranking. And this can seem to be very overwhelming. It can seem to be like, well, now I know this is too big of a job for me guys. You better work on this person over here. Because preferences, they run so deep. They run right down to the core of this personhood idea. For every person there seems to be an enormous number of preferences and likes and dislikes. And it's even encouraged to be unique and be individual and to have your own. Know what you like. Know what you like. Know what you want. Know what you don't want and be clear. And at this point we can say that it's truly important to focus on forgiveness. Focus on that one intent. To focus on watching the thoughts and slowly pulling away from them and investing in them. But the joy of following the Holy Spirit as these thoughts become unordered, so to speak. Undone. That the constructed order becomes undone. That this is a process of following the joy. Following the joy in the joy of connecting. The joy that comes from not judging. It's so strong and so intense that these preferences fade away. That the temptation of course hearing that these preferences are all part of the ego concept would be to go alright I'm going to stop this instant. Make it with all these preferences. And there can be some level confusion in there with you start trying to change the form. And for instance quit your preference for smoking or for coffee or whatever without having the mind shift on the inside. Without following the joy and allowing these preferences and desires to fade as the mind gets focused on its one function. Without this then the level confusion can creep in and we're back to changing behaviors and without changing the mind letting go of the false beliefs. A question that came to my mind before when you were speaking of you know the fact that this body is not immoral. But the ego I think would love to have me believe that it could be. And there is the belief that the body can be immortal. I can remember believing it. I can remember very much like being very excited about that whole idea that the body is immortal. And it seemed very logical to me when I was learning about this that that in fact is the case. That it's only the mind's belief that it's not immortal that would have it die. Yes. Well if we take it really string it out. I mean the ego is for something that's nothing. It has the very much the illusion of being very ingenious. And that's certainly the experience in the world. It seems to have made up a world, a giant cosmos apart from spirit and apart from abstract union. And it seems to have great diversity, great variety. There seems to be great amounts of different skills. Many different choices and menus and to pick from. And it's in the sense of projection. Now part of the projection is we have televisions and video camcorders and VCRs and it's like making movies within movies. The movie of the world is one movie and then within the movie of the world we have another projection. The fragmentation continues and just seeming smaller in pieces. But the one thing that the ego has tried to come up with, has tried to answer, be an answer to heaven is the characteristic or the ideal of immortality. And it has and of course never will be able to mimic or to create immortality. Because immortality is an attribute of God and of creation. And the ego is a defense against that, is literally a puff of nothingness that did not come from God that is not immortal. The ego seemed to have a beginning and it will seem to have an end. But this is all within the fabric or the framework of the dream. So the ego has never been able to come up with immortality, to develop immortality. But it doesn't stop it from at least having the idea of immortality. Of the idea that the body can be made to live forever. And once again, if the body is form, form and spirit have no reconciliation, have no meeting point. One spirit exists and form and time and space do not exist. So in the very nature of form is that it's finite, that it's not eternal, cannot therefore be immortal. It has boundaries. Every form has boundaries and limits. And God and creation do not. I remember one of the things I learned about at that time was about this person Babaji in Indian belief. And he seemed to be proof for the fact that the body is immortal. Because it seemed that he would be around for periods of time and he would dematerialize. And would not be around for periods of time. And then he would rematerialize and stay for a while and then dematerialize. And I suppose this has been going on for quite some time now. And that seemed to be proof that, you know, you don't have to die. That the body can be immortal if it's held in the mind that way. Just to perceive a body or a vision, though, it gets back to perception. In the sense that this can be a symbol for many, it can be a very comforting symbol. It can be a symbol as a sense of the symbol of teaching. That those who have completely laid aside the body, their thoughts are always available to the deceived mind as a part of help. And their vision may appear from time to time if that would be helpful. If this is something that obviously the Holy Spirit can reach the deceived mind in many, many ways. And these are nothing more than symbols of seeing the Virgin Mary in the Catholic tradition over in Montagori. And these are more examples of visions that can be seen that can be helpful, but still are perceptions. So you're saying it's still perceptual, so it's still unreal. It's just that it's helpful and it's reaching the mind where it is. Yes. The error would be to make the connection that you were doing, because it seems to have been around for a long time that it seems to be immortal. And once again, the knowledge or the kingdom of heaven is purely abstract. It's light, not light like the bodies I see, but light in the sense of understanding and wisdom. And darkness being a metaphor in the sense for ignorance or a blockage of not aware of that light. So this knowledge and the kingdom are abstract in any kind of perception. However pure, however stabilized the perception becomes, it still is not knowledge, not the abstract kingdom. It's still perceptual and temporary and will not last. To finish up on a point about the ego uses the body for pride, for pleasure and for attack, they're all the same. You could say they're all pride and pleasure are seeming forms of attack. The mind that believes that it has identified with the ego, that is an attack thought. That is an attack on the Christ within that mind, even though it has no basis in reality. It's given reality by the mind's acceptance of that thought in that framework. It's to the mind. It seems real. And all these uses of the body, whether we talk about for pride or recognition, personal self or for pleasure and pain and so on and so forth, that this is all, the attraction of guilt is all a way of concealing the belief in the mind, the belief in separation and keeping the mind distracted on the screen and everything. So in that sense, they're all, it comes down to attack thoughts. That, you know, the body, the uses that the ego puts to the body, this is all part of attack thoughts. Now, if we pull it back to the ultimate sense to the right mind and perception, the mind cannot attack. That these thoughts are unreal thoughts. Even these thoughts that are called attack thoughts in the workbook are unreal thoughts. These are thoughts that have not come from the mind of God. They do not exist. Only the thoughts that come from God have existence. So to speak of attack thoughts is just a manner of speaking, is it worth? Yes, but they are unreal and a mind that is invested in them is deceived and will experience the hallucination of pain and upset and despair and sorrow and depression and so forth. Fear, because it is invested in thoughts, in a thought system that does not come from God. So once again, though the right mind sees that attack is literally impossible, it sees the false as false. It is not invested in these thoughts, it sees them as false and knows them as false. And this is no different than saying that the Holy Spirit sees the false ideas as false beliefs but looks to the altar, looks to the atonement, looks to the undefiled altar and is certain of the Christ, always looks to the Christ. So this is an example of, in a sense, coming full circle to your question about sickness of why sickness is impossible. The mind cannot attack. The mind is whole and the mind cannot attack. It can make up fantasies and it can direct the body to act out fantasies, but the mind cannot attack. And it would have to attack in order for sickness to be a reality. The right mind knows that the mind cannot attack. The Holy Spirit knows that attack literally is impossible. That the ego is an impossible thought, that all of the ego thoughts are impossible thoughts and unreal. So it is anchored in that. So in a sense there is a part in the Course that is a reminder when one believes one is sick or so forth is that I am not a body and my mind cannot attack, so I cannot be sick. That if there is no identification with the body and it's recognized and clearly understood that the mind cannot attack then with those two conditions there is no justification for guilt. There is no attack. There is no body with which to identify with or attack with, so to speak. And therefore the conditions of peace have been met because the conditions of guilt are no longer in place. If I believe that I am a body or I believe that I am in a body and I believe that my mind or even my body can attack and the attack is real then guilt must follow and guilt must be justified. So you can see where working back to the right mind and being miracle minded and staying in the right mind brings about automatically inner peace. We've talked before about in addition to perceiving my body as sick I can perceive the body of another as sick. But in either case it's just an indication that...