 There was a couple that were pioneers of the course called the Varleys, Barbara and Robert Varley. I remember one of Barbara Varley's stories where she was somewhere in the Midwest and she pulled over, I think she was by herself, she pulled over to stay at this motel and the motel was right off of the interstate. And so as she found herself in the motel room in bed, just laying back starting to drift off in the sleep, she could hear the big semi-trucks and all of the sounds of interstate highway in the United States going there. And she started to drift off a little more to sleep and then it happened, this miraculous merge. She was one moment she was hearing the semi-trucks and the sounds that they were making on the highway and then something started to happen in her mind where it was like an August rush moment. They started to merge together and she wasn't listening to a symphony at the Philharmonic or something. It was just the ordinary sounds of trucks passing on the interstate but it all started to merge together in this glorious way. And she just described it as this most heavenly feel where she just gave her mind over to this higher communication, this merge. And it was so beautiful. All the sounds of the trucks and everything just kind of merged together. She was taken into this ecstasy, absolute ecstasy from that. And that struck me when I read that. I just thought, wow, it's really about giving yourself over to that unified awareness. I've had so many times in my life where I've been places where there's been some kind of, you know, we talked about the bird pecking and the repetitive pounding of the bird on the glass or whatever. Or I've been in cities and countries where there seemed to be a lot of noise. And I just would just start to feel a bit of like an irritation around the noise. And I'd think, no, no, no, I don't need to go there at all. I want to go into the merge and I would just turn my mind and go right into the miracle with whatever the sounds seem to be. And oftentimes, you know, I would almost just kind of lose awareness of separate sounds. I mean, what is noise anyway but a judgment? You know, some people would call a symphony noise and to others it's glory. You know, it's just all interpretation. I started to really see that it's all interpretation. And I've had that happen so many times where I'm going to come up and say, how can you stand to be like in a room with one of these battery powered clocks? How can you stay in the room? How can you sleep? And again, you can go with it and go. You can start to go with it from the ego. Like you want to just go up and get the battery out of it or something and really bring it to a stop. But then that's just trying to change the form. So I would be there with it just kind of really just merge, merge, merge, merge, merge. Let me go into the glory, into the glory, into the glory, you know, with it instead of judging the sound. And you practice with that with everything as an opportunity to train the mind. We were talking about the piano playing. You know, I'm here at a silent retreat and I hear who's over there, wherever with that piano music going, blasting into my silent retreat, you know, this and this. Well, ultimately you have a choice. You can merge right into those notes and melodies and go right into the glory with it. Or you can take it the other direction, like it's got to stop. It must stop. Who do I talk to around here? Make it stop. Make it, you know, you can go either way with anything like that. And I know it's the same like, it's not only with sounds or whatever. I remember going down to Buenos Aires, Argentina and different places. I was somewhere with Columbia, some, maybe Collie Columbia or something with Kirsten and we're just out of the street corner and to stop and have some lunch out there and just, it's just like an August rest moment again. Busy city, buses, cars, pollution, dot, dot, dot, dot, typical things. And I'm in the glory. At one point we're having a sandwich or something and Jesus says, you really are, you're actually happy here on the street corner, like having lunch here on the corner. I say, yeah. But it's, it's, when you're in the glory, it's a perception. It's not, you're not identified with the sounds or the sights and there's nothing to compare and contrast. I'm not, what's pollution? Really? Come on now. What really, what is pollution? You know, but just a judgment. There's no need to take the tapestry of the whole universe and start to pulling things out like pollution. I've even had, I was down in Buenos Aires one time and I was in some cab. They were taking me to give a talk and no air conditioning in the cab and it's, who knows what temperature and it's Buenos Aires, the city of 16 and a half million and not many pollution controls or anything. One of these big buses, you know, the old buses that have the big exhaust on the side, pulls up and I'm in the cab with my window rolled down and I'm just like in the glory. And I turn and boom, just the black soot of a bus right in the side of the face, you know. And I was like, in the glory, bring on the soot. I love pollution. I love pollution. Who has to judge against pollution? Why do we need to be judging against pollution? You know, it's all in our mind. There's nothing outside of our mind. That was the soot of my mind, in the tapestry of my mind. I was in the glory. I loved it. I was in purpose. I'm being taken in a cab ride. I love a cab ride to go talk about God. I'm happy. Soot, bring on the soot. I mean, I just felt, this is really good. I felt warm because of warm and black on the side of my face. And I'm like, mmm, yeah, yeah, love it. God is in everything I see. God is in everything I feel. God is in everything because God is in my mind. That's less than 29 and 30. God is in everything I see because less than 30. Because God is in my mind. That's what you want to do for the sign of retreat. Let your mind lift up in the glory of God. That is where your perception becomes unified. But without that unified perception, you're still going to be seeing and feeling soot. You're still going to hear noises. And your mind's ego's going to say some are good noises and some are bad noises. And if you don't like the bad noises, it's going to be hell. You're going to be irritated with these bad noises. And it's the same about appearances. The good appearances, the bad appearances. At some point, you have to kind of reach the end of that rope. Like I'm tired of like and dislike. I'm tired of attraction and repulsion. I'm tired of playing this dualistic game of being drawn to some images and repulsed by others. It's a game I've been playing with myself. And I want it over. I want to see things differently. I could see peace instead of this. You just go with that. And to me that's what the spiritual journey is all about. It's like where you start to see everything as your mind. And there's nothing outside of mind. So in that sense there's no soot outside of mind. There's no pollution. I remember it wasn't too long ago. I was in Beijing. And I was driving in the car with some people there. And I had heard some things from back when the Olympics were in Beijing. About this cloud of smog over the top of the city. And people wearing masks. And Olympic participants complaining about Beijing. And complaining about the pollution and everything. So here I find myself right smack dab in the middle of Beijing traffic. And I'm just going wow, I told the cab driver, whoever was driving me in the car, I was just saying I just love the color of your city. And it was smog gray. It wasn't a blue sky. It wasn't sparkly sunshine. It was gray. Gray of my mind. The gray of the glory of God. When God is in your mind, when you're in the glory, gray is beautiful. I don't need a blue sky. I don't need sunshine. That's not going to prove my mood to some blue sky and some sunshine. I gray. And I take it up the smog and everything. Take it into my nostrils because they're not really my nostrils. And this isn't really me. And there's no thing like smog that could go up into nostrils and everything. It's like come on, let's quit thinking of things in terms of parts and particulars. And let's embrace the whole. This is how it looks. This is how it smells. This is how it sounds. It's a unified awareness. When you're in unified awareness, all things are equally acceptable. You don't push anything away. You don't say, ah, I would be happy except for this thing or that thing. It's like, it's all encompassing. So there's no problem in unified awareness. Pollution is not a problem. Smog is not a problem. Traffic is not a problem. Going fast, going slow. All things are equally acceptable in unified awareness because all things are the same in unified awareness. Because there are no differences in unified awareness. That's what we're doing. That's why we're here on a silent retreat. We're dipping into unified awareness. Like you said, that glimpse you had where it was just ever expanding. There was nothing lacking, not even a thought of lack. That's exactly why we're here at a silent retreat is to experience that. And the ego will try to trim it down and make it into, you know, okay, you're here for so many days, day one. It's like, oh come on, who's counting? Who's counting really? You don't have to think like that anymore. You can just give yourself over to it.