 Well, welcome everyone. So glad you can all be here with us and share this time. And already we've had a couple of sessions this morning. We had a session over at the other house and we had a session on pain and healing, starting off at the breakfast table this morning. So it's like a continuous going into things. And we've talked about different challenges and struggles that seem to come up on this spiritual journey. I think it's important to have the awareness of a basis that there is an underlying fear of waking up. That this is a dream world, but that the mind has become so accustomed to this dream world that now the dream has become so familiar that the dream seems like it's reality. And that true reality or the light seems to be a forgotten memory or something that's been completely pushed out of awareness. So that's part of, if you can say, a context for why there seems to be so much fear when you're going through this waking up process. That it's like there's a terror of letting go of the familiar and this world has now become the familiar. So now the Holy Spirit has to turn the table so to speak and bring about a reversal. It's also why there's a fear to look within. That's why people report with meditation experiences that they were going deeper and deeper and then they reached a state where they just got frightened by what they felt. It was too unfamiliar and too expansive. It felt so different. And that's a context for understanding why there seems to be so much resistance to the light. When people say, I don't understand, I could be afraid of love. Does it make any conscious sense why would I be afraid of love? It's just that the mind that believes in the ego believes in an opposite to love and therefore the very thing which is love, which is reality, seems to become fearful. So there's going to be a bit of challenge and conflict and turbulence as you go through the waking up process. But those times come and they go. They pass. We say this too shall pass. So this weekend is a great opportunity to make things very, very practical. So if you have specific things that are going on in your awareness, specific issues or topics you'd like to explore, that's why we're here. We've all come across the ocean to join with you and to just come together in a very practical way so you can ask any questions. Also, if you start to get a little bit of an idea of something, but you wonder, how do you put this into practical application? How does this apply in daily life? We love to talk about these things. We live in spiritual communion and spiritual community. The whole point is to be a living demonstration of peace and love and joy and not to just have a bunch of concepts where you talk about this thing, but actually have the experience in your heart. So that's really why we're here, is to make it as practical as possible. And there are going to be times when you may think, I sentimentally agree with that, but I just don't really understand that. I think when you look at understanding, we've all been raised going to schools and to universities and so on and so forth. We have equated intellectual understanding with understanding and we might say that the spiritual understanding is really different from intellectual understanding. Spiritual understanding is a deep, deep feeling of peace. And as I was sharing last night, Jesus tells us that peace and understanding go together and cannot be found apart. He even goes further to say, think not that you understand what anything is for until you pass the test of perfect peace. And what he means by that is until you come to a stable experience of peace of mind that don't think you understand anything, it's better to be more like a little child. You just say, I'm curious, show me. You know how children are always asking questions and saying show me. I understand that you're a mature functioning adult citizen that actually understands how the whole thing works because that's actually the most arrogant stance that you could have even though we're taught that we learn and learn and learn all the way through childhood and then when we reach adulthood we're supposed to have a grip on things. We're supposed to have a grasp of how things work and we could say spiritually speaking we really don't have a very good grasp at all. It just gets more humbling. The farther you go on the journey the less you think you know and the more childlike you feel in terms of I think you even get more curious as you go along before you open up to a sense of certainty. You have to go through a stage where you're very curious and you're willing to ask the right questions. In fact I think well last time we were here did we show the movie The Peaceful Warrior? Yeah. We showed that movie and there's one scene in there where Socrates the teacher is with Dan and basically the teacher tells Dan you need to learn to ask better questions because I think he's wanting to chase after this woman Joy and as he's stuffing down all of his food and the teacher is like you need to ask better questions than this because he's asking do you know her? Is she related to you? You know he's trying to pick up a girl and the teacher is like so you might say that learning to ask the right questions symbolically would mean learning to ask questions about your mind, about your consciousness, about your perception and learning to see that the way that you have seen things has not been very accurate but that there is a better way and you can ask good questions. Instead of saying why are bad things happening to me it could be more of like what is it that I believe that I'm drawing this experience into my awareness? Those are two different questions. One is looking outside as if there really are bad things out there they're happening to you like coming at you and the other assumes oh I have a belief and this belief is bringing forth this experience and I could question that belief. You don't have to just continue to assume that that belief is true and just leave it tucked away down there in my mind, unquestioned I can actually raise it up instead of seeing the folly of whatever the belief is and there are many beliefs that they all have one tree trunk I mean there are many branches on the tree but the trunk is always the ego so the goal is to really get in touch with the trunk and see the nothingness or the meaningless of the trunk and then all the branches and the leaves which seem to be so complex suddenly are up. It was all the same problem it wasn't such a complicated mess after all it was just an identity confusion I forgot who I was I fell asleep and I made up a real complicated labyrinth and maze to try to keep myself asleep and now I'm ready to wake up I'm ready to forgive and to wake up so we have another day that doesn't have a lot of structure I think Jackie was saying lunch will come whenever whenever it's pretty unstructured we'll have a whenever lunch and then dinner tonight we have about the same about the same, six thirty, forty seven and other than that it's pretty wide open I think we do even have dreams that we can pull so if we choose to watch a movie I think we can still make it very dark in here just try it out we have a lot of good metaphysical movies here so we started right off this morning with topics of healing and pain but after our session yesterday on private thoughts and after our movie last night is there any things that got stirred up or any topics or issues that you feel like you'd like to explore in greater detail? I have a question in the movie Dream there's always seems a lot is seen in when I dream I'm just wondering from the waking state and the dream state because when I wake up then I know it's gone, I've forgotten it do you know if if it's revelations whether they stay with you if it's a dream does it say that there is any difference between the waking state and the dream state as far as taking on of that knowledge that I would have learnt even though I've forgotten it? yeah, you're talking about in the human life the dream state at night and the waking state seems to be our daily life there's actually no difference whatsoever so just like in nighttime dreams you can get a lot of symbols that come in and you can have a lot of very powerful experiences both very positive or mystical or very horrific and negative and same with what seems to be waking life then we can just say that all of what seems to be nighttime dreams and daytime dreams are just two aspects of perception that seem to be different but actually are identical and that's something that comes through in a matrix where the teacher Morpheus said what if you were in a dream that you could not wake from how would you know what was the dream that you thought was real and so to human beings and human experience it seems like that the nighttime dreams are just imagination if you go to sleep and you have these sometimes a very active imagination and you hit into the REM state and you go into these states of mind consciousness where you have all kinds of experiences and while you're dreaming them they seem very real you don't doubt the reality of the dreams you feel all the emotions being chased by a dragon or falling off a cliff or whatever it seems to be you have all those emotions so in that sense they're very much like the waking dreams of human beings what they call their daily lives because they don't, again they don't doubt the reality of what they're perceiving usually if somebody would come up to you with a pull out of gun or a knife the reactions that humans have with defensiveness and fear we do have a movie in our collection where though it's there's someone who's given a a task of what's called interactive theater so he believes that everything that's happening to him is part of an interactive theater called the theater of life where it's just actors improvising and coming out to you with scenes and you're supposed to improvise so in that state of mind you're supposed to shoot him strangle him, poison him do all kinds of things to him and he just lets his way through the whole thing because he thinks it really is just a dream or it's just a theater and you know you can see how in our lives if we thought that way about relationships you know you would never think of relationships as having a lot of drama if you were constantly aware that it was all a play act you know it was just like a theater that they were acting out a part that was given instead of being autonomous human beings that have minds of their own and thoughts of their own and decision making capabilities and memories and ambitions you know all the things that are thought to make up the human being as an autonomous individual those are all part of the belief system of the ego but it's just not seeing that it helps the pre-arranged parts from a very ancient instance when all the parts were cast and all of the characters no human being is really a whole person it's almost like there's a part in the course where Jesus talks about the dream that you dream is secret and the dream that you gave away Jesus makes a distinction he's not making the distinction between what we call the dream and daytime dreams or active daily life he's making a distinction between the dream that you dream is secret which you might say is kind of like it's been called the collective unconscious or the shadow of the young it's this dark feeling of unworthiness of wrongness of sin of guilt and that's the dream that you dream is secret and the dream that you gave away is what we perceive as the perceptual world where it seems as if the dream is happening to us or that the characters are interacting with us but we've forgotten the secret dream which is that we're guilty so in the dream that we gave away it seems like sometimes we're guilty and sometimes we're not guilty sometimes we experience pleasure sometimes pain sometimes things seem to go our way at all and it's very frustrating when they don't seem to go our way because it can be feelings of helplessness and powerlessness feelings of being out of control but that's simply it's almost like a magical spell where you gave away a dream forgot that you gave it away and then now it seems to be happening to you instead of you doing it with your own mind so that's like the spell it's almost like if there was like a spell cast on all of humanity that's what the spell is is that there are things that are hidden and they're kept secret and as long as they're hidden and kept secret then they keep getting acted out in the dream that was given away it's like passing out the parts to all the characters and say okay I believe in abandonment now you're going to be the one that's going to seem to befriend me and love me and adore me and then you're going to be the one that will then turn around and leave me so I can feel all these abandonment feelings as if the abandonment is occurring in the dream but actually the abandonment is a belief of what you're dreaming in secret is possible that it is possible to abandon God or be abandoned by God that's the dream that's being dreamed in secret it's really a terrible dark dream and then the world of form we seem to get abandoned by parents by children by lovers by politicians it seems to be there's a lot of different abandonment scenes to play out and dream but they're just acting out the belief in abandonment that's still held in there so everybody knows the story of Jesus what seemed to happen 2,000 years ago and in the Course in Miracles he says you know to the world it seems like I was betrayed and abandoned and attacked and so forth but he says but I did not believe in betrayal in other words so he was not experiencing any sense of betrayal no betrayal feelings even though when you read the story it looks like there was a character named Judas who was one of the Apostles who basically turned him in and from the world's perspective that would clearly be an abandonment or betrayal Jesus being betrayed but Jesus says I could not have been betrayed because I didn't believe in betrayal he had no interpretation of Judas doing anything wrong in fact even would say things in the Bible about you know quickly and he forecast the crucifixion and the resurrection you know tearing down the temple and the rebuilding of the temple he knew exactly what was going to happen he wasn't afraid he was just watching the movie and letting it all be used for teaching purposes and he had no sense whatsoever of betrayal because he didn't believe that betrayal was possible he realized that he was one with God and that betrayal was a crazy concept of belief however for centuries after Jesus I know I've been to some churches and around Christmas they will decide to do the passion play so they pass out the parts somebody's got to play Peter and someone plays Jesus someone plays the pilot and someone in the congregation gets stuck with playing Judas and everybody in the congregation hates that person whoever that person is they do the play for a week and they rehearse it and they do it on a Sunday or whatever this person is hated they get the looks and glares like how could you like the worst of the worst because all of the beliefs in betrayal was being projected onto playing Judas or even in the story of Adam and Eve you know it's like for many many centuries snakes had had a bad rap because the devil was the snake and now they're trying to figure out if the fear of snakes is coded somehow into human being DNA or whatever but he could go all the way back to the original story of Genesis you know the snake is a bad rap the snake is like the tempter and then it says to Adam Eve come over here and listen to me I've got something for you so the most important thing that we do when we look into all of this is we have to get in touch with what is it that we've been dreaming in secret what is it that we've been lying to ourselves about that we feel so bad about that we're hiding why is it that when we sink down into deeper meditations we get frightened of what's happening why is it when we have some very profound loving experience in our life where we feel so loved and adored we feel so much love that there's usually a backlash of fear that comes right after that love almost like we don't even deserve it's like we shudder that we could be so loved you know it's such a life and experience from our daily experience those are all the questions that we're looking at to explore and to actually go deeper into the mind so that we can uncover what it is that we actually believe in and like we were talking this morning at the breakfast table and the idea came up and Sarah was saying well it's all an illusion it's where I'd like to go but actually I must believe something else if I'm still having frustrations or irritations and annoyances come up or like in religion you may go from people have gone from no religions and Christian considered she really was raised a non-religious life even though Jesus appeared in a vision that would be your guide but it was a story when you were 15 your mother showed you a picture a picture in a wardrobe and speaking to this man what have I done? you're very slimmer though beautiful yeah I told that story over in the United States down in the Bible Belt and people just react like you've got to be kidding you can't seriously believe can't seem to believe that but whether you come from a non-religious background you're very religious extremely religious it all comes down to you have to come to a sense of honesty with where your state of mind is like I know when I've gone to what are called morning youth buff churches believing that God is love and God is pure love and so on and so forth that is a beautiful teaching and yet you have to take a look at your experience if you have struggles and doubts and fears and pain and suffering and sickness disease all those kind of things really don't go with teaching that God is love if God is love then where did all that come from so what we're looking at is coming to a practical experience of consistent peace of mind and even when we talk about healing usually when we talk about healing we're talking about removal of symptoms from the body where we're talking about psychological healing of letting go of a certain pain or hurt or something and of course in miracles Jesus says to heal is to make happy so that's like lifting our definition of healing up to a state of mind instead of something like symptom removal and generally when I talk about sickness we get into these deep talks about what is even the meaning of sickness what does it even mean to be sick because you realize that you have to go through such a clearing of your mind of washing away of your old definitions that before you can even come to an understanding of what sickness is or what healing is there's a lot of washing away a lot of clearing has to occur whereas the buddhas say you really have to empty your mind of a lot of things before you can start to get to the core experience of of what is actually healing this healing really isn't a process it's actually a state of mind and you might say that anything that obscures that state of mind is part of the error of sickness not something so simple as a cold or a flu something that's defined in very medical terms so that's kind of our basis here we've got a lot of things that we can kind of go into so deeply there's kind of like unravels some of the questions start to unravel a bit deeper you go just have to say is sickness a separation a sense of separation the same though is a second separation sickness is a defense against the truth it's like a way of trying to be little or small or insignificant it's a way of trying to be irrelevant or unimportant or created by God to be magnificent because the magnificent being is like a trick to try to bring forth a witness to say see I'm right about myself in your role as me which is really quite an arrogant that's why sickness is quite arrogant most of the time we think of sickness as something to be pity some of us say oh poor baby you know but it's not something we all should be pity it's more of starting to take a look at how arrogant the thought is because it claims that you're something else than what God created you to be and there could be this like arrogance on a scale of great magnitude in terms of identity we started with where you perceive in other words we don't start from the top of okay you were created to be the Christ and then we worked down from there to the human being we start from the human experience well here's what I feel here's what I perceive here's what I seem to believe in and so on and so forth and then we come together and call on the Holy Spirit to show us another way to show us that what we are believing and what we're claiming to and holding onto is not really worth claiming to relax a bit and start to let go pick our fingers off of the ego pushing my thoughts because of everything that we've seen about private thoughts of owning a task so and not really thought about what we were talking about I seem to be sick because I'm developing a headache and a backache so all these things are coming together and it's and I can't contact it I don't know what it is and I want to be able to trace that back to what the belief is but the casualist this morning was the high beliefs for instance you know the world is an illusion and all I have to do is believe that it'll all be okay irritate of me it really and I could feel that and it's like well that's not my experience why isn't it my experience why can't I get there what what do I have to do and it's like I'm trying to drive it and I can't get me out of it so how do I go about that because it's it's just stifling I can feel and I've been having fainting type episodes where I do go quite lightheaded because it feels as if it's stifling and I like to get me out of it where do I stand how do I trace that back to what I really believe in it does fit exactly what I was saying about the fear to look within in other words there's such a terror of going inside the mind that's why this whole world was made to get distracted to get so to speak out on the screen it's so caught up into the form and the outcomes and the images and the appearances that you would forget about content or essence are actually happening in the mind and so you can say first of all that to put things in a context that to try to be a human being is to try to be mindless you know that's the whole purpose of the human race is to try to be mindless in other words you know to get so out of your mind we could say out of your divine mind for sure but even out of the split mind because ah yikes that's schizophrenic to have a split mind that believes in two things you know one that believes in forgiveness and in healing and one part that believes in death and those two don't even ever meet and touch it's like an intolerable feeling of having a split mind and then that feeling is so intolerable that a world is projected that seems to be external and then in that external world the mind identifies with the body and with family and country and all these things that seem to be its identity and flips onto that like one of these little pit bulls that you know comes over grabs your trousers and you know what you do the other teeth are clean really firmly wanting to hold onto that and then as you begin to start to awaken and to question these things you know the resistance to letting go of that grip is really what your experience is you continue to play out in symptoms like a headache, a backache or something like this it could be more subtle emotional symptoms like frustration or if you bring it start very specifically like being at the breakfast table this morning and hearing the phrase well yes but that's an illusion too we need to remember that and then having a reaction to that then let's say high metaphysics are used as kind of like a cover over of what's underneath that would be a defense mechanism you could say it's another form of denial or the ego of quoting scripture or in any way you want but you reacting to it is simply Jesus says whenever you react to a defense mechanism that you perceive in a brother or a sister you're failing to forgive yourself for the very same attempt so that's a great insight I come so it's as if there's a brother or sister and they're acting in their ego or they're in a state of denial or whatever and then but the frustration is not coming from that but from the fail to forgive yourself for the very same attempt so the mind is in a state of denial it projects out a world and then it assigns a character to play out a defense mechanism and then seems as if it's frustrating to have to deal with this brother or sister but they're just a trigger or a reminder of something that's within one's own mind that was addressed so that's why Jesus says you should always have great appreciation for all your brothers and sisters because they're simply pointing out or reflecting back to you something that you need to look at yourself but that you have decided not to look at and they're showing you off this is something you need to take another look at and that's the only way that you wake up that's why we should have such gratitude in our life no matter what role they seem to be playing they're more like mirrors they're mirroring and showing us what we're holding onto so in that sense it's like if you're failing to forgive yourself for the same attempt then you can bring it back to okay, I've done this before why would I get upset at a brother or sister for something that I've done myself if I'm going to be innocent and kind and forgiving and loving on myself then I have to extend that same grace to everyone so that's like the very beginning of the inroads to it so if it's silence then you're forgiving the brother you're actually really forgiven that same thing you're releasing you're saying I give this defense mechanism to you Holy Spirit that if I give it to you it has no harm you can do no harm at all anytime I've seen you use it in the past that's all covered it's like a blanket insurance policy that covers all occurrences of the defense and by giving it over you feel peace come back into your heart so the guilt that I felt when I was sitting here I must have done something wrong I should have expressed what I expressed in that way that's my own guilt that I've made the same mistake in that past I'm not forgiven it's just coming up again and coming up again for healing I think a lot of times when things start to come up the ego will say look you aren't so spiritual or look you're not living this you're not a good example of this and it just concludes see that you're guilty because of this instead of seeing it from the Holy Spirit's perspective oh it's good that it's coming up it needs to come up it actually needs to come up for healing because you can't release something that you're keeping hidden you can't release something from awareness that you're not even allowing into awareness you're certainly not going to release it or it's like the story of you know how in the ocean the deeper you go down into the ocean the more there's a compression there's the more pressure as you go down deeper because of the weight of the ocean so like if you had a bubble that started off at the bottom of the ocean it was a tiny compressed bubble and it just started to expand and expand as it got higher towards the surface of the ocean because of the pressure the water pressure wasn't so great and it finally gets to the top it's like there's no pressure it just pops and it's open into the air and that's very much a good metaphor for how things are in the mind that when the ego is way deep down in your mind and there's all this weight it's been so buried and pushed out of awareness it's like this tiny thing but it's highly pressurized and the more that you allow that bubble to come up closer to the surface closer to true healing you can actually in the end it makes it all the way to the surface and just joins the air and the bubble is gone it just reunites with all the other gases so that's why it's so important in the healing to let those emotions come up and in one sense you do have to be discerning we were talking last night that if you just let yourself be discerning in your family system or with your friends or whatever that's when they may discommit you and lock you up you shouldn't be walking around on the planet you're disturbing the planet with all that that's why people don't see a therapist that's why even in course groups you have to have a certain amount of trust a certain amount of feeling that you won't be judged before you're going to start to let some of those bubbles up that's where those private thoughts up because if you have too much fear of being judged why risk it why risk it that's the way the ego says this is judging it's just judging in the mind the ego is the one that's always judging but again remember if the ego is the judgemental thought and the ego made up this world then the mind the person fears being judged by others often because it's in your own mind because it's in one's own mind because you've made that world up so every thought that you have is only in your own mind it's only in your own mind it's better to even talk about the mind instead of your mind and my mind because the answers get complex oh I've done my forgiveness lessons but you're still angry wow how tricky you see how it's been my mind and your mind my mind's healed but your mind's not and we're back to that same split you know whereas when I'm healed I'm not healed alone you know healing has to be for everyone so everyone must benefit from your healing experience and it can't be that you're healed and they're not or that they're healed and you're not and oh they've all got it they look so happy so joyful so loving they're laughing all the time they've got it and I don't that's just another comparison trick it's still a way of beating yourself up and saying you know I'm not there I'm not there yet and woe to me woe is me because I'm not there so these are all the tricks of the ego trying to splinter it out and make it seem like a complicated thing but it's it's all about really opening up and seeing that everything is connected and that it's all one mind that's where the peace comes can I have a question then because I felt when we were at the table and this was what I took about yesterday so it's interesting you know could we are projecting everything we believe in ourselves and you know what I asked for yesterday and what happened this morning the things I feel I feel and sometimes I say things because that's just how I see them to be but I it's still like I want it to come from the heart then I felt you and then I got like gosh did I said that or you know does this mean that or does that mean this and you know got so complicated again and it was just like no I just want to be able to you know you can sit there and just say things that seems to be accepted and um I don't know what I'm missing to be able to speak I think we'll just use the example of what happened this morning at the breakfast table because it's a great example because it's practical that's what we're always saying bring up a practical example and let's use it so that's exactly what we're doing you know when the discussion got into of course the miracles teachers and you were saying in a broader context there are many teachers of course everything and everyone is teaching us but there are many teachers and then Jackie will bring you up and say that Marianne Williamson was one of these teachers and she seemed to start off very much on track referring to her book Return to Love of course the miracles for many people a huge introduction into it and then subsequently in later years has written other books The Evening of America and A Woman's Worth so kind of referring to well you know I'm receiving some differences or you might say going away from core fundamental course teaching and you were saying it's important for me I'm using it for my own discernment but I'm not going to just gloss over and say well they're all the same I'm proceeding some distinctions and I think that there's something meaningful for my own discernment that's what I heard you say and you were saying well we're kind of learning from everyone and she's where she seems to be at and she's providing her blessing where she's at and so what is underneath all of that in terms of what's helpful and what's constructed and I reminded of a teacher that I was just adored as I was growing up there was a teacher named Krishnamurti Krishnamurti would go travel these continents always going staying in warm weather and people would raise all kinds of topics like Buddha says this Krishnamurti Krishnamurti says this imagine going around the world with all these continents you've got all these different religions you've got all these different teachers tens of thousands of different teachers famous teachers throughout history and he's hidden there to have an open discussion and some will come forth as well but Buddha says but Jesus says and he basically would say very politely serves madams can we come to the point in other words if you have a question to raise let's just look at the ideas not who said what who wrote what he was unconcerned if it came from Jesus Buddha, Krishnamurti, Joe down the road Fred Margaret it didn't matter it's like let's look at the ideas here we should be able to come together and join and just say what resonates for all of us there's certain ideas that must really resonate in the core of our being can we come together and explore those without getting into these memories so that's why where the discernment comes in is if you take one example and say a teacher seems to be talking about politics that we need to have a political solution you know we need to have a peace department or we need to have this or this or this or that for your own discernment it would be raising up the question in your mind like is there a political solution to the human condition will politics solve the human condition and if you explore that I think and we all would go deeper and deeper into that we would say from experience that there's been many political attempts many treaties signed many governments formed many governments disbanded throughout human history there have been many attempts at having some kind of a political solution that would bring about peace and harmony and happiness and if you just watch how history is unfolded you could probably conclude that none of them have worked and in fact in A Course in Miracles Jesus actually says seek not to change the world seek rather to change your mind about the world something that resonates when we read that I've been going about this the wrong way I thought the politicians were to blame they weren't doing enough to save the ecosystem they weren't disarming the world they were arming the world instead of disarming the world it's easy to point to politicians to governments it's easy to blame a few people that were either appointed as a king or queen or elected or somehow made it into political office and say they're the problem if they weren't doing what they were doing I would be happy that's just another version of the blame game so when we come together with these things in one sense we can leave the specifics out who said what it doesn't give it any more weight in fact at the beginning when I was I read the Course for like two and a half for eight hours a day for two and a half years or whatever I would go around and I was just so excited like a little boy and I would be talking and say well Jesus says Jesus says that is not Jesus so finally somebody stopped me and said okay okay we get it Jesus says what do you say and I was just of course I say what Jesus says but they were like what do you feel what do you have to say here what is your experience was really what they were asking why do you have to preface everything that comes out of your mouth with Jesus says and of course there are no universal symbols I mean you go of Indonesia and Saudi Arabia Middle East and many places and if you start to say Jesus says Jesus says people will be so what Muhammad says or you know or whatever you know there is nothing special about a person be they male, female, young or old so this is where you start to have it not be personal because whenever it is personal whenever it even seems like there is a character out there named Marion Williamson and Marion Williamson seems to have said and done some things and seems to be a certain way as soon as we pull out of the entire cosmos of images zillions and zillions and zillions of images we pull one out of the whole tapestry of the cosmos one little strand we call it Marion Williamson the judgment has already been made it doesn't matter whether she is the most glowing perfect example of light and love of being or the worst example a hypocrite and a fake and a phony it wouldn't really matter as soon as we have made the first label we have pulled out of the tapestry that is the one the forgiven world which is all the images are equally the same equally and when we looked in here Peter said I turned everything into a question so that was the cue wasn't it that was actually said question so what did that mean it meant is there a solution in politics for this world is there a solution in women's issues for this mind no it's the question to the S not who posed it or who wrote it yes it's so freeing it's like oh it doesn't even matter what they said or what they seem to do or whatever because as soon as I pull them out of the whole tapestry and I give them a name whether it's Pencil or whether it's Pen or whether it's Marion Williamson it doesn't really matter so this I make a label for a tiny part I've lost the whole because the whole is the whole and even when we grew up it was saying the whole transcends the sum of the parts that's a beautiful saying eventually Jesus retranslated that for me he said the reason that's real and that's so the whole transcends the sum of the parts is because the whole is real and there are no parts oh well that the sum of the parts wholeness is what God created God didn't fragment billions and billions and billions of images and I said oh now that I've done it maybe I should start giving him names you know and people even interpret things from the Bible where they'll say there's not a hair on your head that's not known by God actually God doesn't know the hair on your head and God doesn't know your head and God doesn't know your body and God doesn't know your specific name and we have workbook lessons in the Course in Miracles that say things like when all things be echoes of the voice for God which say instead of using all these trivial little names that you made up or that the ego made up why not let the name of God be the safe replacement for all the little names that you made meaning the ego oh that's starting to get pretty humbling instead of thinking all these parts are so important and all these names are important and who said what who's on track and who's off track and all of this huge distraction going on we can simply go maybe I was mistaken about all of this naming business maybe God is not in the duplicity maybe God actually is oneness and pure love and union and maybe the religions have just been naming giving God different names Jehovah, Jehovah, Yalway Atman all of these different names when God is nameless and just a beautiful loving being and experience that literally is beyond naming is the ego that is everything so it makes it very simple you start to see oh I'm off the hook it's not like I really have to figure out who's on track and who's off track it's just that I need to free my mind from this mechanism that's trying to do that and that's what the freedom comes you see how simple it is too when you kind of are popped back into that perspective then it's like oh okay and then it should be easy to go into these techniques to work with forgiveness yeah it should get lighter and lighter and then it's Jehovah because this morning I would touch something and check that and it should only have a session and and it was something in her mind too and you saw about this with the private thoughts and it's not the private thoughts because if I have a problem it is really reflective in what I see in those ways it's good enough and we can sort it together because I'm seeing that the ego thoughts they're just ego thoughts so I believe in them or I don't seem to believe in them because we just need to both believe in how ego thoughts are real and that's it yeah it doesn't change ego thoughts or private thoughts don't change reality it's like again like these a metaphor from the course it's like the sun being telling the sun what to do or like the ripple you know that's the feeling having this kind of a thought that I would die is something that will happen yeah that's it that's of course why the private thoughts are pushed pushed out of awareness because it's like danger the idea of oh my gosh would be dangerous to contemplate or to think make those thoughts they seem to make the world in other words we're not trying to dismiss the power of the mind or the power of thoughts because Jesus is saying everything that you perceive in the entire cosmos is a result of thinking it's just that we need to go much deeper than that and say okay then maybe there's a distinction between real thoughts and unreal thoughts so he would call the thoughts of time and space form, images projection and so on and so forth those are the unreal thoughts and yeah, there can seem to be hurricanes and tsunamis there can seem to be wars there can seem to be interpersonal conflicts there can seem to be lots of things that arise from those ego thoughts the message is and just remember the ego's not real those are not your real thoughts those are not the thoughts that you think with God those are thoughts that you're trying to think apart from God like making up your own nightmare and you know making up who's afraid of the big bad wolf well, if you make up a nightmare and you frighten yourself then it's like God and the spirit are like this waiting thing there's another way you don't have to stay in that nightmare you know, there's no attempt to interrupt the nightmare there's no attempt to steal the nightmare away you know like a little child a baby, if a baby's playing and then suddenly a baby grabs a fork or a knife and it's very sharp a baby could hurt itself with that sharp knife but of course if you go as a parent and you try to take the knife away from the baby the baby's my knife and the parent's like I'm not going to let you play with that knife but the baby doesn't know that it's dangerous the baby's just mine my toy don't take my toy away from me I'll sleep now I was made up of this ego and it's saying my toy, my toy God's saying come on give it back should do playing with that that's not a good thing to play with there you go mine, mine so this is why we're talking about you can't hold on and protect those ego thoughts because God is not going to come in and rip the ego away there's no ripping with God it has to be voluntarily handed over we have to voluntarily say okay, playing with this ego has not brought me happiness constant happiness it may seem to bring some pleasures and some pains and some good times and bad times but it definitely hasn't brought me constant peace and happiness and so when I start to gauge it from that perspective now I have to become more willing to hand it over and what we're talking about here is those private thoughts like Jimmy was saying when you're having those thoughts and they don't feel good the tendency has always been to push them down I can't say this what will people think of me this will ruin my reputation they won't love me they won't fight me things anymore and this is saying okay now what about going the other direction and coming together you could say symbolically with people who are all wanting to be healed of this thought system and as soon as things are talked about they're just put out there like put on the table like oh here's the thought I'm having popped on the table not the ego will always want to take those thoughts personal it's like a personal insult or a personal assault but they really aren't the Holy Spirit doesn't see anything personal or insulting about them they're almost like gifts to the Holy Spirit oh thank you for not clutching onto that thing and hiding it anymore thank you for bringing it out into the open and then when you all laugh together at the thoughts like last night I was talking about this comedian Don Rickles who was like always spewing out these private thoughts about everybody and everybody was laughing well it's much healing when people start to laugh at their differences you know he would he would use stereotypical images about black people white people, ethnic groups racial he would use all the things people would say you better never say in public about everyone do it about one or two he did it about everyone he was completely all inclusive in his spewing out of all these private thoughts and then people left because it was almost like laughing at the differences like these are real differences these concepts don't really separate us you know they really are just laughable and as soon as you get to the point of laughter then you know that the healing is genuine because you're not taking it serious at all that's what happens in sessions you have sessions every morning peace house at 9 sure you've got books to start out with but it turns into very much it's just got to share and expose all the thoughts and the things that needed healing throughout the day or the day before just to expose it and make it lighter most of the time we're already laughing at them but if they really believe it's serious hold the face and keep kind of like okay this is really important to them as soon as they're ready to pop then everybody can turn into laughing it's like Jenny said it's so not personal it's really not like one person's daughter or another so it's such a waste of energy to determine if it's yours or mine or if it's true were you really thinking that uh-uh that's like a misuse of intuitive skill you can seem like at one stage oh I'm really intuitive because I can pick up what you're thinking but you gotta take your back and see that you still see error out there it's in this perception that's an interesting one it's very good to see yeah that's an interesting one so psychics and people who can apparently read your mind or read some first relatives mind or what they wish for you it's still a projection out there so it's still a ego it's just as you say a misuse of intuition of the intuition is that what you're saying? yeah so it's definitely so long away it seems like all of a sudden you pick up all of these thoughts but the ego will take that and say it's there or it's there or it's attributed to a specific person to take the next step towards healing it's to see it's not personal and they're just completely unreal thoughts but they seem to be in my mind you said you're indifferent to the ego you're fine yeah so you bring effect to your own mind always always always however intuitive or spiritual it seems to be it always is only in your mind is that what I'm hearing just identified as really unreal it's just a movement of thought that's not me that's not me otherwise it turns to judgment because sure you can see a block whether it's in your mind where you can start to see someone else is having a difficulty or a block but that's not really helpful it's only when you bring it back and you see you're still believing if you say oh that's the block we're stuck with that that's how I am seeing the era as being real so it always is to bring effect to this world is like you've heard about going to the surface and all the mirrors or some kind of sophisticated apparatus for fooling the mind for like magicians use all kinds of different things to trick the mind and fool the mind this whole world is a big trick as if ideas can leave their source and thoughts can leave the thinker and go out there and oh there's one thinker now there's 6 billion thinkers out there oh a trick it's this false thinker which is the ego has disguised himself and blasted out a world with 6 billion seemingly separate independent thinkers oh that's a pretty good trick and now these 6 billion are always conflicting they never are thinking the same things and it's never harmonious they're insecure they see all these thoughts now this 6 billion sometimes trying to kill each other plotting suspicious with that song from Elvis with cotton with trash we can't walk out we can't go on together with suspicious mind this is suspicious out there so now you're starting to begin to understand wait a minute this is all a big trick as if those separate thoughts are out there being acted out in all these people when it's actually there are no secrets and we have brought some great movies I think we brought along like ed tv they'll tell you a little bit about this movie because this is kind of a way of popping the whole trick these are amazing movies now they're coming out and they're showing oh it's like that beachy song ice-carded the joke it started the whole world crying but I couldn't see that the joke was on me it's been in the music and the movies for years in ed tv you've heard of these reality tv shows where they have a camera they follow someone around they're going to make a tv show called reality tv but it's really far from reality but it's going to expose the trick of the world and basically they follow ed around and ed and you get to meet ed then you get to meet ed's brother ed's brother's girlfriend and the camera is always on you know they got all these cameras running a camera following ed around and the cameraman is always catching all these things so you've got ed talking there and then you've got ed's brother talking and then ed's brother's girlfriend is kind of shy on the camera and everything and then the camera catches ed's brother's girlfriend looking at ed kind of admiring, attracted looking you know it's like all the things the nuances broadcast you know to everybody to all these different viewers is catching all the nuances so basically ed goes at some point later on goes over to visit his brother and he's got a woman in his apartment ed's brother does not his girlfriend his brother's girlfriend so it catches this affair on there and then ed has to go over and talk to the girlfriends and she's seen it all it's all public knowledge it's not like there's any private thoughts that's the whole mechanism is showing that what if there were no secrets what if actually everything you thought was broadcast as common knowledge to everyone well wouldn't that accelerate the healing you know wouldn't that accelerate it in an enormous way because you would start to see there's no differences you know these are just a bunch of dramas and everything that are coming from these private thoughts and then you'll be more likely to give them all up but through the the disguise of this world it's like it seems as if things seem to take time secrets take time to be uncovered you know you see that in the paper all of you know Jimmy Hoffa's bones discovered or you know sometimes it seems to take you know years or decades before these secrets are revealed but imagine if there was a way of speeding it all up so you could see that all of it is part of the same trick imagine how guilt-free you would be too if you realize that you didn't really have any real dark secrets that you really hadn't harmed God that you hadn't changed reality in one bit and that you were still perfectly innocent and this whole thing called the human experience was just a trick to make you feel guilty and that's that's what it's going for forgiveness liberator forgiving everyone could you speak up a bit please from there forgiveness is a very powerful liberator you know we we can forgive our families we find it difficult to forgive our families but how can we forgive politicians and I think releasing all these people that we hold grudges against or freedomists against is very liberating it's done wonderfully you know you find that going through life you come across completely you either love it first sight or you don't like it first sight and I worked with them in a committee I worked with it was very different to get on with because she was in every committee that ever was and in every committee she was in she dismantled it because it had to be her way and of course I had heard this from other people so that made me more determined to work with her and see if I could win but I just didn't in the end then I came across the chorus and miracles and other complications and one of the practices I had to do was to go through and think out everybody that I had any that I held in any sort of judgment and then one day in my I was inspired to pick up the phone even though years after probably pretty years later and I rang up and I said I'm just ringing up to say I'm just ringing up to say I'm sorry if I ever offended you or hurt you in any way and the same for then her husband you know she was always she was always really taken back from people because it was a big silence and I just wonder what happened after I said and I wish you the best in love for someone but I felt so relieved because this was the after going through all my list that I could ever reach as far back as I could remember this was the one that was the most difficult to forget and yet there was no reason in the world why I should hold on to that burden but I felt so relieved and so the spur of the moment I just picked up the phone it's gone so that's great isn't it so if that's taken back that experiential thing that I created the world I see I made the world I see it's all about me doing isn't it this person this person is difficult to work with because she wanted it her way that's just the ego isn't it in yourself is that right so everything is just the ego projected out there for you to be able to look at it and forgive it and forgive it yeah I think the core issue is what is called an authority issue in other words the question is really am I the author of myself or is God my author if you really had to boil it down to one question and it's being asked at a very deep level am I the author of myself or is God my author and what does that mean if God offered me in spirit then I must be as still as God created me in the Bible it says likeness and image but that just must be properly interpreted that man is spirit and not flesh at all it must be that mankind is really spirit this is like a big mask that's been drawn over the spirit and if that's the case I must be as God created me I must still be spirit but the alternative is the beliefs that I can make myself any way I want to be I can make myself material I can make myself young old, male, female, fat, skinny I can dress myself up or be naked I can make myself product of this country that country product of these parents those parents what they call reincarnation and it's almost just like shifting the images around and around I can make myself the way I want to be and I'm going to keep playing with these images until I find one that I like I don't like that one try this, try this that's what millennials have been about it's like this ego mind trying to make up an image make up a concept make up an identity that God didn't create and then seeing it as if you can hold on to one mask and see different masks and say I don't like those masks over there but I like this mask and the Holy Spirit is gently saying you'll never be content with the masks and whatever you're seeing like that woman on the commissions or the person that you see here or there or this and that if you find something you dislike about them that's just reflecting your own dislike about yourself that the ego has made you because human beings don't feel whole and complete they always are seemingly in process trying to become better more whatever more happy, more healthy, more famous more rich, more more of something their whole life is more and more more always trying to become something different than they already are and that's because the very mechanism underneath is like an idol it's not a true identity so the only way out of this perplexing seeming problem is to let go the ego to release the belief in the ego and accept yourself as God created you instead of trying to do God one better like okay, right you created me perfect but just give me a chance see what I can do and it's like the sun beam telling the sun I'm over here, you're over there I have a sun beam and I'm proud of it and I'm apart from you when in fact the sun beam is not really apart from the sun and the ripple is not apart from the ocean ripple can think it's independent has its own autonomous existence but a ripple is just part of the ocean and we're almost still part of the ocean of love so every time you feel any kind of frustration if you trace it down deep enough that would be what you could always trace it down to that one question am I as God created me or can I make myself just the way that I want to be you see the rebelliousness in the second part you're all saying letting go of the ego you can't completely let go of the ego is that possible it is in fact that's the whole point of A Course in Miracles is you might say that atonement or complete forgiveness is letting go of the ego completely so that's the goal that's the goal, yeah but I don't think you can completely let go of the ego it's just a belief in other words that's the goal and if we said the goal is God's plan for salvation then God's plan for salvation must be possible in other words if we say that's the goal but it's not possible then that would be like saying that God's plan is a nice idea but no the Course is saying oh no it's actually more than possible it's inevitable the more that you fight against forgiveness against the plan you're just giving yourself an illusion of struggle for as long as you want to do it you're fighting against the inevitable ego doesn't like that word inevitable it would much rather believe that salvation is impossible but if you're on about private thoughts that's the ego again like with the past so if you completely let go of the ego are you saying that you don't have any private thoughts yeah then all the thoughts I don't think that's possible yeah but what it is from that state of mind all that you think you think with God what does that mean let's talk about it in a practical sense imagine that you have two voices in your mind one is ego and one is spirit holy spirit and the goal is to train your mind to listen to only one of those voices that's what Jesus was an example of he heard one voice he said be a good cheer in other words don't worry about me being tempted by this other voice now because I know that this one voice is telling me the truth I'm not confused between the two voices anymore so in terms of private thoughts what that would mean was is that imagine Jesus is walking around he's just sharing and everything that comes out of his mouth has the purpose to heal and to comfort and to bless he's not got any gossip going he's not telling the scoop on people over there in fact he's so open in everything that he shares everything that comes from him is just a blessing for the whole universe because he has no private thoughts he's only sharing thoughts that God is giving him to share also he's very telepathic you look at the Bible and there's a story about Jesus and the woman at the well they never read the Bible this is another good example when he goes and there's a woman who's at this well and I think she's a Samaritan she's something other than what he he and his people have been but she comes over and she says would you like some water from the well and he says drink of me and you will never thirst again so he's taking it way beyond the sip of water and then he starts telling her he says to her call your husband and he knows that she's with many men he knows everything about there are no private thoughts but he's using them in a gentle, loving way he's not there to condemn but he's like she goes running off oh my god there's a prophet over there by the well he knows everything about me he's like reading my mind but the whole story is used to show that there are no private thoughts not that he doesn't pick them up but that he doesn't believe that they're real he doesn't condemn them or there's a story in the Bible about a woman a prostitute who comes in and she falls down to Jesus and she brings out the oil and she starts putting oil on his feet and cleaning his feet and all these Sadducees and Pharisees are sitting around condemning this woman how can you even associate with such a woman doesn't he even know how she is and everything you just need to be away from these kind of people get away from them they're the sinners and Jesus is right there with her reading all their thoughts in the Bible we know he basically talks about her sincerity and her willingness to turn from her ways that's why she's there and all these other ones in the room are just condemning the whole scene as if he's doing something terribly wrong and he can point that out to them he knows all their thoughts not in the condemning way he wasn't condemning anyone but his message was let's not get caught up in these ego-private thoughts because they're not who we really are they're just fake they're imposters all these thoughts that we're holding onto and believing real are imposters they're not our real Christ self so is that possible again that's inevitable in other words as you start to wake up it must become apparent that none of those private thoughts did any harm or did any real damage and that if you thought that they were secret you held them secret you were only keeping secrets from yourself from your true self and when you wake up finally you start to see oh my gosh I was playing a trick on myself and I did it to myself so I'm glad I could stop doing it and wake up to what's real and true instead of keep blaming the self thing and the projection thing is to keep you stuck and keep blaming because if somebody else is doing this to me