 is that as we go along about anything we talk with the level of the mind or the right mind is where the healing is going to be. And even when we get to behavior, any type of behavior, if we feel personally responsible for behavior, in other words, there's one point where Jesus says, you know, if you raise body thoughts to the level of mind, they are out of my control, in other words, and you will feel guilty for them. Now this is pretty subtle, so we have to take this pretty slow and take a look at this. It seems very much like we, the mind is responsible for the behavior. It seems as if everyone here is a human being or a person who has decision and can decide what to do behavior-wise. You know, I can decide to come to this meeting tonight. I can decide to stay home and watch a TV. I can decide to get up and go to the restroom. I can decide to cough or sneeze. You know, it seems like the mind is directly responsible for the behavior. I can choose, for example, it seems to say, I'm going to raise my right arm. I could choose to say, I'm going to put my right arm down. You see how there seems to be a direct connection between choosing and behavior. What Jesus is saying in the Course is that really the only choice you have is at the thought level, and your behavior is like an automatic byproduct. It automatically flows from your thought, from your choice that you make at a mind level. So in a sense, you really don't have choice in the ultimate sense at the behavior level. Now that's pretty steep because the way that we perceive the world, it sure seems like that. You know, it's like, hey, I can decide if I'm going to wear the green shirt or the blue shirt. I can decide if I'm going to have the hot dog or the taco. You know, it really seems like we get a choice between forms. But Jesus is basically coming from the Course and saying, well, remember what I've taught you, that all form is projected. In other words, the world is a projection or illusion. And you're choosing between illusions. Do I buy the blue car or the red car? You know, Jesus is saying, you know, is the choice between illusions a real choice? You know, what do you have when you choose between illusions? Yeah, that's why I believe they can choose that way, because it's ordered all the illusions. You see, it's made a hierarchy of illusions. And it believes that it will pursue the good illusions and avoid the bad illusions as it's judged. But what we're getting at, though, is basically, if we keep going into this, what it's going to come down to is that really the only choice we have every instant is between the right mind and the wrong mind, between the Holy Spirit and the ego. Now, what's in between that decision in our mind and what seems to be this world? It's nothing in truth, but what it is, is I kind of use the analogy sometimes of thinking about the mind like the world trade center, we'll say, for example. And the basement of the world trade center, way down at the bottom of the basement, is where the ego and the Holy Spirit are. There's this brilliant light that is the Holy Spirit, this gentle reminder. God's not mad. You could never separate from him. That's the silliest idea that could ever be. It's ridiculous. The Holy Spirit is this gentle reminder that's in the basement. And the mind, the ego is on top of it in the sense that it's right down there with it, but the ego is the belief that we have separated from God. And all the floors of the world trade center are these dark floors and false beliefs, because the mind is so afraid of the Holy Spirit that the seeded mind is so terrified of that light that it's like stacked on 1, 2, 3, 4, 13, 14, 15, 16, 48, 49. You can imagine the fear that this mind feels if it's so afraid of the Holy Spirit. And basically, if you know, you kind of have to put it into a little bit of a context that, you know, it's like in the 500 that says, into eternity, we're all as one, they're crept a tiny, mad idea at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh, that the mind in a metaphorical sense is still like a little storybook. This is our genesis of the Course. You know, the genesis we have in the beginning, God created that. Well, the Course tells us, you know, that, you know, into eternity we're all as one, they're crept a tiny idea at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. And in taking this idea seriously, believing that separation from the Father was really possible was a horrifying idea. And literally, the projected world arose to hide or to cover over, to be like a hiding place, kind of like in the Garden of Eden, you know, where they grabbed the fig leaves and everything to hide, that this world was made as a hiding place. So not only do we have all those stacks of dark beliefs, all those floors in the mind that were made to like cushion or be a barrier from that light, but then we've got the roof. And in our analogy here, we'll call the roof where the flag is blowing, that's the world. So now what we have is what's in between that decision where in the basement we have the Holy Spirit and the ego down there, that we have on the roof what seems to be what most people would perceive as life in this world. I'm a teeny little person in a vast world, this huge sphere called Earth, and I'm battling for survival, trying to keep my head above water, trying to make it. There are all kinds of huge external forces like fires burning out in California that are burning down houses, there's hurricanes, there's tornadoes. You can see up on the surface it's like a nightmare, because the mind has forgotten this warm glowing wonderful light in the basement, and it's like it has all these false beliefs. And yet we still have moments where we feel instants of love. In other words, that light is so powerful in the basement that it keeps sending up what the Course calls miracle impulses. The Holy Spirit is so powerful that those impulses still come through all of the dark wayers. And the only problem is that when they reach the surface Jesus calls them their distorted miracle impulses. So they come out in real funny distorted ways when they come out at the top of the building. It's like we're still craving for that light and that love, but once we believe we're a little teeny person we're running around trying to find the right human being, trying to find the perfect partner, trying to find the perfect job, seeking outside ourselves, trying to find among the images and the idols, we're trying to find what will complete us. But really what we know deep down inside is that light, the Holy Spirit, the reminder of Christ is what our true completion is. So to get back to our thing of levels, all of those levels and layers that I talked about, all of those levels in the World Trade Center are part of the wrong mind. That's the darkened mind. And the spark of light that's in the basement is the Holy Spirit and the ego. Now the only thing the Course says is the way out, the way to escape is basically you've got to go down to the basement. You've got to go with Jesus in the Holy Spirit. You've got to go down into the basement. And the more you go down, the more you go down through the level, so to speak, and you approach the basement, the ego shrieks. It's like you swore you'd never come down to the cornerstone here, you know, this basic cornerstone. You swore you'd never come down and lift it up. And if anybody has read The Obstacles to Peace, you know, if you read The Fourth Obstacle, that's probably the biggest description of the fear of God, you know, where the ego is saying you swore you'd never, you know, look up, you know, keep your head down, keep in the darkness. And so basically the Course keeps teaching us that the basement is like the mind, and that's where the Holy Spirit and the ego are. They're just two thoughts in our mind. But through the sense mechanisms like projection and all kinds of mechanisms, the mind keeps trying to throw the guilt and the pain out onto the world. In other words, that's where the scapegoating takes place. That's where the blaming takes place. Always blaming something up here on the surface instead of going down into the mind. So one, the last thing I'm going to add onto this before we maybe shift at it from another angle is basically, when I've used this analogy of the World Trade Center, you know, with all these floors and everything, you know, a lot of times the idea is, oh my gosh, this is depressing. It's like, good, the Holy Spirit reminded me, but if I got 50 floors to go through and I got to turn on every light in every room in every closet before I can get down, you know, to the basement and turn that light on, this is going to take me forever. Well, the good news is, the course is good news for this, too, is that I can use the metaphor of the master switch. There is a master switch. There is a holy instant that literally, if you can hit the master switch, it literally lights up the whole thing at once. Okay. And that's what, when Jesus gave us the course, he really is, if you read a lot of those passages, you can tell he's helping us go for that master switch. You know, when he, in the workbook, he'll say things like, you know, sink down beneath the clouds, you know, perhaps today, you know, he keeps, he's talking about, he's really speaking to us as if this is very day. And this very instant, we're going to be able to go down in our minds and hit that switch. It's going to turn the whole thing on. It's going to be the real world. You know, he, he really, he's trying to help us get clear about this confusion between form and content, form being up there on the top of the World Trade Center and content being in evasion, so that every time we come together and we go into talk about a problem or whatever, usually when we first think of, we have a problem, we perceive it in terms of form, right? It's pretty common. I don't have enough money. I've got rent next month, or I've got an ulcer that I've got to treat, or I've got this, this man or this woman at work that's driving me nuts, you know, that I can't handle, you know, or one of those things in any way, shape or form, we describe our problems and we define them in terms of form. And Jesus is basically saying that it really, once again, the only problem you have is a thinking problem, thinking being content in the mind. But until you can get at your thinking problem, you'll continue to think, you'll continue to define your problems as being out there on the screen, on the projected screen. So that's kind of a quick synopsis of the level, and that maybe you'll give it a chance to go into some other areas, come at the same thing, really, but come out from some different angles. I think we can go home now. The thing, too, I think that coming at the master switch, too, is kind of like, if you could think of the ego as like a tree, where the ego itself, the beliefs that you could separate from God is like the trunk. And then everyone knows what happens when you go up from the trunk. It's like, the branches, more branches, more branches, twigs, leaves, it seems to be just all these fragmentations that take place once you get away from the trunk. And basically, what the Course is teaching us is, the good news is, is that an illusion is an illusion is an illusion. It doesn't matter how many times an illusion fragments. As Robert Perry says, all different sizes of zero. It doesn't matter if you multiply zero by 100 or a million or a trillion, you still get zero. And I think all of us have looked around this world. I mean, you look at the commercials on TV, you look at this world with the billboard, it seems like the images are just fragmenting an unbelievable rate, you know? I mean, in the last couple of decades, look at what shows like MTV and BH, and you see these images flashing, you go down the billboards, cash. The news is not, I mean, you turn on the TV, it's like, you know, it's like images, noises, you know, that basically this is, if you can imagine this gigantic mirror that somebody pressed down on and started this cracking and started to shatter into millions and billions and trillions of pieces. That's literally what this projected world is. And not only that, but there's a thought in the mind for every image. In other words, you know, we say microphone, rug, shoe. You know, when you were little kids, we learned to label things in the world, you know, ball, mommy, daddy. Then you get older, you go to elementary school, then you get into high school, then you get into college, and then you have a special day and you start, if you're a doctor, you start labeling all these parts of the body and how they work together. And you can see how the learning of the world is based on just labeling all these parts and then trying to figure out how they all work together. Really, exhausting. So the exhausting for the mind. The mind is used to unity and wholeness. The mind is used to simplicity, you know, keep it simple. And it's trying to teach itself all of these parts. It's very exhausting. So I think it's lesson 184, the name of God is my inheritance. Jesus describes this, you know, he describes in that lesson how you have a name for everything. You try to put a little space between everything else and name it. And in that lesson, he called that phase one, that everybody who comes to this world has to go through phase one. Phase one is you learn the world. Everybody who comes here has to learn the world. And as we look at the course, the context of it later on, and of course phase two is unlearned.