 way of thinking. And it can be awkward initially. Because we know the old scripting. And this is calling for something new and unfamiliar. And there aren't a whole lot of role models for the new way of being. So it feels like very unchartered water sometimes. I had that experience in a few roles. Last summer when my friend Tom died of AIDS it had been like a two year time that I had spent with him in this illness. And just coming to such clarity with him about he was not his body he did not have AIDS to me. I just did not see him that way at all. And when he died I immediately went to the course. And looked up everything it said about death. And found all these wonderful passages that were just such a comfort to me. And just spent a lot of quiet time and a lot of time praying. And felt his presence with me. I mean it was just like he was, I mean I even felt him like over my shoulder. And I was talking to him and I just felt like he was right there with me. And I was saying Tom what was it you were trying to teach me. And it was like flashes were coming to me. Oh my gosh that was it. That was it. And it was like one right after another. All these insights of things that Tom was trying to teach me through this process that I had known him in. And I had this feeling of him just smiling and laughing and going God you got it finally. And I mean I was just so joyful and I went to, and I even thought well am I to go to his funeral or not because I didn't feel like I had anything incomplete with him. You know we had talked and I felt real complete and I had told him everything I felt about him and he had told me. And it was like there was nothing more left unsaid. But I felt you know I was to go and I went. And my experience of funerals in the past has always been once I start crying I cannot stop. I mean it's just like a flood of tears and I just feel intense grief. And I didn't shed a tear and I had several people around me who were real close friends of mine who again that's another thing that I've always like if there's somebody I'm close that I perceive myself as close to as they're crying. It's like just an automatic trigger to me that I just go into it too. But in this one friend of mine was just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing through the whole thing. And I just felt like I you know I could hold her and I could be with her and everything but it just didn't it just didn't feel like it always had before. It felt different and just throughout the whole thing and then we drove to the cemetery and had this you know the ceremony there and everything. It was just all of it together. It was just like I just had this feeling of him being right there with me and saying it's okay. It's okay I'm fine nothing happens. And it was just it was such an incredibly different experience for me. And I was so grateful for that just to see that it doesn't have to be perceived as that tragic thing. And not to project your feelings or say to deny things and whatever but that's what we're here today is in anything we go into if things trigger or whatever and you want to process or you want to trace them back that's what the mind shifts all about. It's really starting to trace it back and see the meaninglessness of it. When its meaninglessness isn't seen then it can seem like a sad picture or there can be all kinds of emotions. Shreds of fear, grief and so on and so forth and pain and sadness and all those kind of things. And of course the simple teaching is whatever you're not feeling happy, peaceful, joyful, it's a misperception. And you have another choice. It's early on in the text where Jesus will go through about sadness and depression and all these different things and the second name of the section is this needs not be. He goes through, he goes through one of the time these emotions seem to be devastating and then this needs not be. Depression. Depression comes when you are deprived of something that you want but do not have. Remember you are deprived of nothing except by your own decision and then you decide otherwise. Very, very it doesn't avoid things. It just kind of traces it through and really traces it talks about it always as a decision. On the surface it doesn't seem like a decision. It seems like there can be waves of emotion. Sometimes without even a specific reference. At times the emotion seems to be tied into a specific event that's being perceived or a specific memory that's being brought up into awareness but at times it seems to be very general. Sometimes when people have chronic depression and you say what are you thinking about? I don't know but I don't feel like life is worth living. There's not even a real sense of what the specific connections are. It's very difficult. It's a starting point just in those kind of cases but in every case Jesus is saying it's always a misperception and it's always a decision that you're deciding for that particular emotion. I thought today I know the other day it's always helpful to go through the metaphysics and actually the other day I told you the little, the Adam and Eve story I told you that in the beginning we're all as one. They're cut to tiny, mad idea. I wish the Son of God remembered not to laugh. There's another passage in the Course that really starts to describe the fall in very graphic terms and I think it can be helpful because it just doesn't, you know, most people don't spend their days giving a conscious thought to the fall of man. I mean there just seems to be so many specific problems, job related problems, relationship problems, financial problems, these things, they seem so concrete, they seem so real, they seem like they take so much energy to deal with that most people do not think about the fall of man when they wake up in the morning and passages like these to me are really helpful because that's the problem. The problem is the belief in separation and no matter how far removed, no matter how far the mind seems to have gone into this maze and there's layers and layers of complexity that seem to make the fall an obscurity but really it's just that one problem we talked about so there's a passage that when it's talking about the two emotions on page 347 that really starts to talk about the fall and basically... I was just going to say this chapter 18, are we going to be in the first section? We're going to be in the second section. Thank you, I've got one in the car, I just did braiding because we really didn't use the other tape. And this time looking at the fall, instead of a tiny mad idea at which the sun remembered not to laugh, this time it's coming out the fall in terms of substitution. And I think substitution is an interesting kind of thing in the sense that there's truth and there's illusion and it's kind of like, you know, when they talk about babies being switched at birth in a sense there's a substitution and there's a switch that's taken place that the mind, when it fell asleep, it just... it switched it took serious this thing called illusion and it forgot reality so really that's the first and the only substitution that has ever taken place was the substitution of truth for illusion or illusion actually illusion for truth is the first substitution. And the mind was so horrified that it started making all kinds of substitutions and adjustments to try to handle the first one without dealing with the original one. It just started making up things. It's kind of like when a child does something and he thinks it's terrible, he thinks oh my gosh if my mom and dad ever found out about this and so he tells a lie and then he tries to cover it and then he starts telling another one and another one and another one and it seems to him like I can't let mom and dad find out about the first thing and that's too horrendous so if I have to tell 15 lies, if I have to weave a web around it and to really make it obscure then that'll be good because then mom and dad probably won't ever find out about it. Take a real sluice to get back to that. Or you've seen those movies where people seem to be wanting to help each other. We watched one last night as a matter of fact where one lie starts and then more and more and it's pretty soon you have the web of deceit. Or I think of movies like Justin Hoffman and Jessica Lane-Tussy where he really likes the Dustin Hoffman character, really likes her and he needs a job and so he that's his first thing is to get the job he goes into deception right away and he dresses up like a woman. Then he seems to fall in love and Jessica Lane character really confides in him female to female so to speak and really trusts that character and then he falls in love and then it's like now what am I going to do? All the people I remember on the soap opera that he's on when he finally you know goes off the script and takes off his wig and all these people are there's this big glide and all these substitutions have taken place and those are all just good metaphors for precisely what the mind has done in this world and for each one of us to take a good look at and am I going to continue to keep adjusting am I going to continue to keep substituting we've substituted bodies, families, cars, homes, jobs we've substituted travel we've substituted pleasures, conveniences, comforts oh it's just a web of things to try to make up a kingdom and to kind of forget about that first substitution and Jesus is saying it ain't going to work substitute all you want, come back here and let's look at the first one and the only one and then you'll be free you'll remember who you are it kind of gets back to when we were saying that it ain't so bad so what we want to do then is take well let me just take a few of these lies they work they seem to work and they seem to be kind of fun so we'll take a few of these lies and we'll use this to get rid of the rest and that's where a lot of conflict comes in when you start looking at them it seems to be conflict because the substitutions have seemed to work and now the mind is being taught that they really haven't worked and to me the word adjustment is important too it's like when that first substitution was made the mind has followed it with a series of adjustments I remember when I was in college taking the psychology of adjustment you know and really just questioning the underpinnings like what's fishy about adjustment I just didn't like that word there was something that adjustment meant and coping mechanisms why cope why not go to the source and be free forever why just cope cope cope and this and that I remember when I worked at Goodwill I worked in work adjustment I was a work adjustment supervisor and most of the work that we were supposed to be doing was helping these mentally retarded schizophrenic adults with many many seeming different disabilities physical emotional mental psychological adjust to work you know adjust to become productive citizens build their productivity learn work skills and everything and there the clients were coming to me you know they had issues with their supervisors and productivity and this and that and hey and all this and that but they had issues with other mental issues they want to talk about you know relationships with their families and so on and so forth and I remember the program I was working in it was kind of like they wanted us all to use a behavior modification approach to work adjustment and I remember the time I just came across the course and I had all my progressive ideas and it felt like doing all this behavior model was like working with one hand kind of tied me on your back saying here come on let's talk for a minute see if we can you know get down to something a little bit deeper than just you know how many chips did you get and your work adjustment you know charting and all this and that so