 You know, you could try to just put a clamp on your mouth or try to put on a happy face but without that connection with spirit it would just be empty, it would just be another pretense and we don't want those pre tenses. So that's why we have this great opportunity here to really go deeply into this belief system called ego to go very deep and to expose it and to reach that state that is beyond the opinions. I find that in my journey and my life questions were very helpful, they were always encouraged and not so much questions about like the gossip of the world, who did what to what and what's the latest on this and what's the breaking news, not those kind of questions but questions about the mind, about consciousness, about perception, about beliefs, about the thought system those are all helpful questions because they tend to unravel the ego and the ego, if there's anything that should be questioned it is the ego the ego is not something to just assume as real and true and just kind of leave it alone you do have to question what you believe and to be free of it so to me those are very helpful questions I have seen teachers of the course over the years that will not even respond to questions of the world that will say that's not a real question, move on to the next one and in one sense we want to encourage the spirit of asking those real questions but again we're not putting any kind of limits of parameter so you can still feel free to ask any question whether it's about something in physicality or something in the mind, something about consciousness, just feel free and open to ask anything another thing about this is how far do you take this stuff? and you take it all the way anyone who isn't really interested in taking it all the way to enlightenment will soon tire of me because they usually don't hang around and they don't show up and that's fine too my lesson always was take it all the way and in taking it all the way you will see that nothing can be judged there aren't judgments about people who are taking it all the way or who aren't there aren't judgments about who's getting it and who's not getting it in the state of forgiveness everything is equally acceptable and there isn't this sense of timing delay and there isn't this sense of before, during and after it's a unification experience it's a state of mind where everything is completely unified and in that unification there's really nothing to question or nothing to confront and it's really been good over the years I've just watched a lot of things that have gone on in this world and a lot of things have gone on with the course and I never felt there was anything to confront in form there was never a person to confront also I remember reading in the teacher's manual that to an advanced teacher or god there is no challenge and I thought, well that's cool no challenge not that the experiences you go through don't seem challenging they certainly seem very challenging to the ego but it's that you really don't have to go challenge anybody you don't have to challenge anybody on their beliefs there's no one to convince that's the best part I find in traveling around this world and going to these 26 countries is I had an experience where I could feel the contentment and the peace and the joy of my heart and I knew that there was nobody to convince and you really have this feeling of being relieved or off the hook when you have this feeling that way you can talk to anybody you don't really care whether they profess to believe in something or not whether they profess to believe in God or not suddenly this old thing about whether somebody is a believer or a non-believer who cares, I mean who really cares if somebody is a believer or a non-believer when you're in the joy yourself everyone is in that experience with you you feel totally connected like in quantum physics you feel like you're part of the unified field you feel that everything and everyone is you literally, not figuratively or sentimentally but it's just all of you so in that sense there's nothing to challenge there's nothing to confront there's nothing to defend and I've just watched over the years even with the Course in Miracles as it seems to go through it's copyright things and copyright controversies and different things it's just been this soft, gentle watching knowing that there's nothing to fix or change that nobody's really wrong it's just the playing out of the script and it's a very peaceful sense of watching but there's no sense of fixing or changing anything and that's what I would like to talk with you about in the coming days because to me this experience I'm describing to you is most practical a lot of times people can say sometimes these things sound kind of high and mighty or they sound glorious but they don't seem very practical when it comes down to day to day decisions day to day decision making and what I want to talk with you about and really join together with you in is joining in the willingness to just let go of every belief every scrap in the mind where there seems to be the slightest bit of controversy or conflict or ill of these feelings just to suddenly get in touch with what those are and to be willing to let them go and to really see that there's no cost in releasing these feelings it's not really like something terrible is going to happen to you if you quit judging or if you quit discriminating if you quit trying to picket things it's not like something will be lost I find in my life that as I've gone on this journey deeper and deeper where I had anticipated a sacrifice of some kind it's just like getting up close to it and going that was nothing at all like a laugh I can't believe I was so afraid of looking at that I can't believe that I pushed that down for so long you know, you have the feeling like wow just let it all come up and I think too when I talk about trust it's not so much that you have to develop more trust because a lot of times people think I just need more faith and more trust but it's just that the power of our mind is enormous and when you have invested that power in a false belief system it's more that you have to unplug from it or divest from the ego instead of get more trust and that's just another ego trip when an ego is telling you you're not trusting enough you don't have enough faith that's just another kind of a push from the ego that you're not good enough and you need to be better and it's not so much that we have to be better at anything we just have to expose the ego and pull all of our faith and trust away from it and see that the spirit is worthy of our trust that our guidance that small still voice inside its guiding us is extremely worthy of our trust and if we follow it it brings states of unlimited happiness and freedom and more than anything that's what I want to convey to you I have really dedicated my life to living the experience of the course of enlightenment to actually living it