 I was written after a talk that I did down here at the Theosophical Society, it was inspired by the poetry. That's a great money to have. There were some years of time about that. And one, yesterday, you said about the love is, and I wrote this one about three, three weeks ago, in all life of Britain, in all I may write, place no trust, no credence, or how can I describe the indescribable, how can I define the indefinable? How can I represent the love which is beyond my understanding and beyond the capacity of others to convey? Love is, therein lies the truth. These are the only words I can use, for no others are worthy. No other words have any power to express that which is beyond all expression. Love is, no more to say. If I were to write a thousand times more than ever, still there would not be one phrase, not one word which could illuminate that which outshines all others except the love is. Wow! Thank you. So, first, does all that have any constant dip into it? Yes. In the tradition of all the Romantic poetry, Elizabeth Berry Browning, how do I love thee, let me count the ways, back in this period, Walt Whitman and... That doesn't come into this category. I'll just write my thoughts down. I know, this is great though. This is like going through the tree, expressing the love. I'm spell-checked. I'm spell-checked. You know, actually, there's something that has in my heart that says that I need so many people that have done like you, but that's why it's all now into expressing it. We have ideas like for calendars, like there was a man recently that wrote to me from... I think he was born in Chile, and he lives in Brazil, and he speaks three different languages, but he's like one of these painters. It just turns out these glories, almost like a Picasso, one after the next, but they're all inspired by Charles Holy Spirit, Christian Murry and whatever. And he's sent me, he says, here, please put this out, use this in any way that you can. He's got no sense of possession or ownership, like painters tend to sometimes have over paintings, like numbered or... But I think that's what's coming, is poetry like that and put in beautiful ways where people can appreciate it, like these sayings that we put on the wall here, or just getting into some way where people can ponder it. This actually started six months after I visited Germany, and it was Lynn's, a couple of days before Lynn's birthday, and I couldn't find a card with appropriate words, so I thought I'll just write a personal note on a blank card, so I got the blank card, and thought right now, what shall I write? And all of a sudden, I came pouring through me, I'm literally like you talk about Holy Spirit, and I didn't have a pen, I was running around the house looking for a pen to find one, and so I actually, there was a last line, which I couldn't remember, because my memory was not good, I remembered the basis of it, but not the final line, and so I wrote the final line of my own, and then later on, after I'd given it to Lynn, and she'd read it, I'd told her about the line, the final line, and she said, yeah, I knew that wasn't, that didn't work in with the part, so I'll cut the final one out. Actually, I'll read it to you, if you don't mind. It was the very first one, and I knew so quickly that, what I was staggered by, was called, with all my life, you are the center of who I am, you are the center of my universe and my existence, you share with me all that I am, and all that you are. We are indeed one for and for ever. There is encampment to our love, for we are love, and we are one for each other, and one with God. We are one for each other. We are one for each other. No, no, no, no, no, that's the perfect way to advance our morning. It sounds like we have built you. Yes. Yes. Well, that was a very good movie because talk briefly about it last night, but that's like, at the core of everything that we will discuss, and under every issue, that there's private thoughts and private minds, and frankly, only the thoughts of God can be shared. In other words, that's God shared God, and that's how Christ came into being, through sharing, through extending. And Christ extends, and Christ has creations, but they're pure Spirit, so it doesn't do any good to try to figure out what our offspring, our creations are. We have creative ability because God gave us creative ability, and we have creations, but these are all pure Spirit. The we is not the bodies, and when we look at animals, they're not our offspring. These are pure Spirit creations. And so you might say that creation extends in a perfect line. God creates Spirit, Christ, and Christ creates Spirit, which are creations, and it just continues on, just like in this world, we have genealogy, and we have families, and families seem to extend on and on and on in a linear way. You might say in an internal way, that's what creation is. It just extends and extends. But part of creation is that only the thoughts of God are real, so only the thoughts of God can be extended. So if you have thoughts that are not coming from God, they cannot be shared. So when you have thoughts in your mind that you feel guilty and shameful about, so shameful that you think you have to hide them and protect them and bury them in your awareness, it's because you're afraid that they'll be shared and you're afraid that your image will be damaged if they're shared. But the good news is that they can't be shared. They don't go anywhere. Gossip, you know how people are so concerned about gossip in this world is if a rumor starts and a rumor gets spread and oh my God, it's on television now or it made the news or whatever, like last night, the embarrassment, shame was these little personal secrets broadcast all over the United States. The news is what I'm sharing is that only the thoughts of God can be shared. You cannot share private thoughts. So can you move forward a bit? Sure. So if you really start to to be aware of the dynamics of what this means is that the attempt to share private thoughts is the sharing of nothing is what Jesus calls the sharing of nothing. So what seems to be this big secret that it could be shared, it could be damaged to somebody's image or whatever, there is no damage happening because these thoughts cannot be shared. Even though our educational system is based on the sharing of these nothingness thoughts, it's what education is. It's based on geometry or on mathematics or on science or whatever and you seem to learn knowledge and retain it and then pass it on, pass it on to your children or so forth that Shakespeare had it right when he wrote Much Ado About Nothing That's what this world is as Much Ado About Nothing. Nothing's happening, nothing's really going on and these thoughts that seem to be so private and so secret that the mind, the persona like holds them in and keeps them denied and repressed it's all a big game because only the thoughts of God can be shared. So if we look at perception is there anything anything at all that involves perception which is what the whole cosmos can be actually shared and there's only one thing in all perception it can be shared and that's the Holy Spirit's perspective on the world. That is the only thing that's capable of being shared because of course the Holy Spirit represents God, it's the voice for God it's the perspective if God knew of the world and if God knew of time and space and images then the Holy Spirit since it's God's representative would be that perspective and that's what we call the happy dream, the real world the forgiven world Jesus uses many different names for this one perspective in the Course He calls it true perception even though all perception is false by definition cause God didn't create any of it true perception means it's the closest to come to the truth it's purified if all perception is the past you might say that the Holy Spirit's perspective would then be a purified form of the past a cleanse of all of its judgments all of its categories so we were talking about the other day when Jackie brought up the thing about what we were having with the breakfast table and then the aha was oh, even if I have thought it tries to pull one image out of the whole tapestry which we call Marianne Williamson it doesn't matter what else we tack on to Marianne Williamson but just the idea that we can pull Marianne Williamson out of the whole out of the tapestry is the judgment because there is only the whole there is only the Holy Spirit's perspective which sees the big picture and if they've done paintings you know that you can step back and look at the entire painting and behold the whole thing at one or you can focus in on particular elements which is exactly what the ego does it's very selective it just focuses in on particular elements that it believes it can construct its own world based on these specific elements but it's highly variable no two people see the same world if you have a car smashed up and there's ten eyewitnesses you get ten different views and accounts of what happened because perception through the ego's lens is highly variable and again it cannot be shared so that's why relationships are so difficult in this world as well because you have two human beings which represent different perspectives on everything and they come together even if we'll say they're soul mates and they come together and they have a 99.9% agreement there's always going to come that point where they wake up in bed one morning and you believe what? you know, because the 0.01 or whatever it is is going to come up there because by definition no two people see the same world and by definition no two people can share anything except what? the Holy Spirit's perspective which would of course eliminate the two people as well because there are no two people in the Holy Spirit's perspective everything is unified everything is one so it really starts to give you a little bit of an underpinning for why you really are innocent is because all of these private thoughts have not tainted or damaged your innocence your innocence remains intact because God created you innocent and because the Holy Spirit has a perception or a perspective on the world that retains the innocence that reflects the innocence of love or of heaven so this is the convincing job that the Holy Spirit has to convince you that you're divine instead of mortal and that's the Holy Spirit's job all you have to do is have the willingness to open up to move in that direction and of course the result is inevitable it has to be if that's God's plan there's nothing you can really do to delay or to stop or to prevent God's plan from reaching its course which is perfection for instance and Martin was bringing up today some of those feelings again you go through phases where in terms of humor I think I've watched like lots of television shows and I've watched lots of comedians and those videos shows, funniest videos and all this and that and slapstick comedy we were talking about the Marx Brothers but more so like the Three Stooges a lot of knockdown a lot of slaps a lot of punches a lot of people sit there and laugh and laugh and laugh as I watch human beings blessing each other was it Larry, Curly Moe it was like we could call that a bit like ego humor in the sense that ego a lot of the put down comedians we were talking about is the same kind of a thing but then once you get deeper to the point where you start to realize that these are just private thoughts that are really shared then there's the gentle laughter of the Holy Spirit or it's like the gentle humor cosmic humor of seeing because none of this is so then you can really laugh before you come back to that point then it's like Margaret said can even seem a bit sad we had some sadness coming up almost like mockery like there was a mockery going on and look upon the ego and its cruel humor trying to make something laughable more is just a distraction than actual healing but when you get even much deeper you start to see that none of the private thoughts have any validity or reality then it's the gentle laughter of the Holy Spirit like my child choose again this is not so haha it's light, there's a lightness to it so that's really the goal of working with your mind training is to reset gentle laughter of the Holy Spirit you know aha I'm not fooled by that anymore you can just kind of see it for what it is and watch it and not by the bait you are empowered you have dominion it's a good name haha some of the comedy programs are okay like the Vicar of Digle these are the okay ones but the modern the modern you know stand up comedians the ego the ego is more the comedians of the old the mother can shock you know it's what they're saying the ego works more he's working more whether I'm noticing that you know it's shock people comedians go up like that program that's the film that's the name drama, sensationalism like the thing in the gossip magazines to try to grab attention and of course the way out of drama is to start again to see that these are private thoughts that can't be shared part of the drama is some thoughts seem to be so terrible, so horrific that it's like the kept secret and then the exposing of the ones that have kept secrets and seem to bring shame until you can even go deeper and start to see that there was no need to hide them there was no need to bury them because they weren't dangerous that's the key to this whole whole thing and people feel shameful about all kinds of things but it all gets back to comparisons the shame around personality characteristics of the body or this and that it's like it says comparison it must be an ego device for love makes love makes none it's a very simple line but when you take that one simple line and you start to apply it to your mind and you notice any time I'm comparing or analyzing or whatever then that is the ego and it's not that I want to stop doing that I want to come to the realization that I never had the ability to do it in a place because people will say all the time to me oh yeah I've got this chatter mind chatter going on in my mind and it's comparing and analyzing and judging all the time and how do you stop it David it seems unstoppable I've tried to meditate I've tried to use affirmations I've tried to use music I've tried to distract my way from it and this mind chatter just goes on and on it's like a really bad habit I'm actually ingrained but I can't seem to stop it and I say yeah how do you stop a runaway train you don't you have to get even deeper in your mind to a point and start to question how could there even be a runaway train you know how could instead of trying to stop the runaway train you could start questioning how could it even start how could there be a runaway train you know and that's what Jesus is saying in the section about how is judgment relinquished he says basically you have to come to this awareness that you never were given the ability to judge in the first place if God created you would God create you to be a judge and if you're created in the likeness and image of God is God a judge of course we were raised with Christian images zapping tribes here and there and issuing threats and getting angry but that was of course the ego's own God and made up its own God it wasn't the real God God is not a judge God does not even know what punishment means or he's not lording over anybody like you better behave or you'll pay none of that has anything to do with the real God pure love and if we are a creation of that pure love we must be like God so instead of trying to stop the runaway train and being frustrated of not being able to it's to really just open your mind to the experience of I could never have been the one that was judging I could never have been the one that was criticizing in the first place because I was created by God and that's how you get a perspective on the ego of you're not it you are not the ego you cannot be the ego you can't be a creation of God and be the ego so this is where we get back back back it's a good thing to ponder but again what we always bring up is in a practical way what really starts to bring the release is when we are talking and sharing and we bring up issues or troubling thoughts and in the exposing and in the it's like that first poem that you were reading about the Doug and just I let you go I do not need you anymore you know in coming to that that state then we are truly free I do not need you anymore whatever you seem to be in my life before doesn't matter now I do not need you anymore you do need to hang on I need to hang on anymore I need to mute and to catch yourself acting or buying into a situation for me I think that's extremely helpful for me I think Kirsten called it the course the other day biting into an apple but it thought it out there a lot and that gave me a great deal of wins this time don't pay that was really great something that had quite an impact on me yesterday with something Jason read was that we are a host of God and it meant a lot to me because I tried to express it a little bit yesterday but the idea that we are a spirit well the truth that we are a spirit not that is something which is quite difficult to grasp because unless you are experiencing it spirit doesn't really mean anything whereas to use the host of God if you were the host of God clearly you can't be anything else but the host of God and that gives you something more of an anchor if you know what what I need to hold on to it seems to be a more tangible thing than spirit to be the host of God yes beautiful almost like a play on words of Jesus would you be host of God or hostage to the God well that was what Jason read yesterday and I think that was my immediate thought but that's it basically those are your two choices you get to pick pick those two and then the more it becomes apparent that's not a difficult decision then then you have the peace I think it's where the pleasure comes in it's like I've told people if this world was nothing more than wicked darkness just just terrible you could drop it like a hot potato and they throw you a potato that's been roasting on the fire and you go immediately because what's the point in holding on to a hot potato unless you like to have fried fingers some people may some people may like to do a hundred and fifty fingers so if the world was just wicked evil and you saw it as wicked evil like a hot potato it really wouldn't be a difficult decision but it's the pleasure pain factor it's that the ego disguises lumps of guilt in pleasurable forms and you go for you're attracted to the pleasure so you go for it and that's where the fool's gold comes in you know look at the things in the world we talked a little bit about Marilyn Monroe fame money all famous husbands all the associations that go with that to the world those are all very pleasurable things in fact the world would say you've done very well if you didn't get one of those things the world would say very well just one of them oh you're famous even though you're broke your body's breaking down you're all these other things but you're famous at least you got one but it isn't great when you find these icons that seem to symbolize getting all of them and being suicidal being depressed then aha there must be some kind of trick going on here and we're talking about these are things that masses of people if you went throughout the planet even like third world countries underdeveloped countries sometimes I mean I'll talk to some people that have been to some very underdeveloped third world countries and they'll say the natives were happy and then when the foreigners came and introduced all these innovations better crops, better housing better medicine better better better better suddenly the natives thought we are poor and underdeveloped and the misery started it wasn't until they had a contrast experience they were happy life is simple I think it was the Hopi Indians that were literally they had a ritual that at the end of the year everybody would gather all their possessions everything that they'd accumulated throughout the year and put them all together and have a big bonfire and burn them all isn't that great it's like the symbol of mourning and saving it's like the way of the world has been whoever dies with the most toys wins the game and the Hopis were like those are possessions let's burn them and make sure we do it every year so we don't ever get caught into that stuff but everything is kind of backwards and upside down in this world so as soon as you start to realize this then life can start to become more fun because then you start to realize I don't have to play by the world's rules anymore I don't have to hard-forward and control and possess and be so afraid if I think that if I don't have these possessions then I won't have any safety and security and happiness because you can learn from the symbols of the world and the witnesses that people who have done that route do not find happiness they bought into the fool's gold and those things are only important in terms of pleasure it's like when you really start to take a look at what is the beneficiary of money and possessions and all these skills and abilities it is the body a mind does not need money what would a mind need money for if you're a mind and your mind is just a mind and mind is very contented of being a mind it has no need of money or possessions or houses or countries or any of those things a mind has no need of any things but bodies when you have a body identity then suddenly these kind of things become very important because money is exchangeable for many things that could be helpful for a body so if you're identified with the body then these things would become very important to you so the more that you forgive the more that you release these beliefs and this identification with the body then the less you would need these other things because what meaning would they have it's not your assessments it's not your safety, it's not your security but if you're identified with the body then it does seem to be your safety your assessments and security and then these imaginary things take on great importance and people will fight wars over them and go through scheming and all kinds of wild crazy schemes to get or to protect these imaginary things so we start to have a little bit of a context and that's the pleasure, pain thing in this world pain seems to be very different and yet when you get into the course Jesus says it is impossible to seek for pleasure without finding pain saying basically that if you think that you can maximize the pleasure and minimize the pain you're in for a big shock at some point but this whole world is based on the possibility that it's possible to maximize pleasure and minimize pain and that's what Jesus calls in obstacles to peace he calls the attraction to guilt when you first read those words in the course I remember I was reading through the book and I got to the obstacles to peace and and he had the attraction to guilt and I thought that is sick that sounds very sick and then he had the attraction to pain that is sick and then he had the attraction to death I said that is sick and he basically says you're invested in this world it is sick and these are the dynamics underneath that is making your sickness you are attracted to the very things that you really don't want that will not serve you in eternity and at one point he said everyone who comes here is a death worshiper that's an interesting thing to be called the death worshiper gee I didn't think I was a death worshiper I thought that maybe there was a tribe somewhere of cannibals over in Africa or something that maybe we're a little more into death worship and eating people and everything but I'm civilized I'll eat anybody in this lifetime at least underneath to believe in the ego is to be a death worshiper because the ego is death and to invest your mind in something that is death would be to be a death worshiper these are kind of strong words and at times he uses some really kind of grotesque imagery you know talking about rubies that are like blood and you know he uses like graphic graphic ways of describing that you're making an eyeball of something that really has no meaning whatsoever and before you release your faith in it your belief in it you have to start to see things open-eyed for what they are and that's why when people look at the course they say if everything's about love why does he talk so much about the ego there's more stuff about the ego in that book than love even as far as topics go and I say well it's just that the mind is so invested in the ego and so addicted and so mesmerized by the ego that the ego is what has to get exposed love just is you really don't have to do anything to love and you can't make yourself love because love is what you are and he even says then in the introduction he says this course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love for that is far beyond what can be taught it simply aims at removing the obstacles to the awareness of love's presence so that right there in the introduction is a perfect context so that when you go through life instead of trying to find the perfect mate to fall in love it's more like if I do find a mate that I want to be with it will be more about forgiveness or about releasing specialness or discovering and releasing the obstacles than falling in love love is already it it just simply is so you're not going to fall in it be fortunate oh I'm lucky I fell in love you might have fallen in romantic love but there's going to be some interesting lessons involved with that one maybe a bit of a bit of the apple there if you talk about it out of a need taking the bite out of that apple but then again all for the good if you keep it in the context like oh this is good this is for the removal of the obstacles then you have a context for it you seem to go terribly wrong when the wheels fall off and everything instead of going this is terrible this is terrible my life is in shambles you can say there's something good here to work with there must be a major lesson to learn here so you see a much different context for it look for the from the love perspective I think instead of being laid and trying to reach for love that's how I read the course the first time around I recognise now when he talks about the ego and all these grotesque images that he has I skipped over that you know whether he describes the ego as the frame and he talks about it in all grotesque terminology and then you get a bit further along and he talks about the frame being the Holy Spirit and oh yes I read that that's lovely that's love so I was searching for love and all of it and the ego would still avoid looking at itself and I can see now that's what I did that was really strong the ego even taking the book and saying well no I'm still going to ignore that so it's it was just a misuse of the whole thing that's a good point of getting at this whole topic of resistance I had a friend of mine who was originally from England named Dorothy and she was the chef that had a chef at this place that used to be in the Catskill Mountains called the Foundation for a Course in Miracles where people would come from all over the world to translate the course which was kind of the first really worldwide center and she was the chef there and she would say that when the teacher would do a workshop on special relationships that they would have to order four times as much food as normally just for that workshop because they always ran out of food immediately at the special relationship workshop they had to run out to the stores and always doing well on special relationships let's get four times as much, it didn't matter who the people were it didn't matter where they come from because they came from all over the world the resistance to looking open-eyed and exposing these kind of things about special relationships especially the special love relationship I mean that's in this world that's the pinnacle of striving, why do people who have crazy careers do crazy things to earn no money, they do it so that they can have money and houses and cars and things for what purpose for this special love relationship you know if as they say if you're lucky enough if you meet the world on the world's terms and you're successful then the next step is use your success to get that perfect love partner and they'll call it the object of your desire you know use everything that you've gathered to get the object of your desire well of course America's comes along and says love has no object oh my gosh love is, love has no object no object what does that mean no object you know it's like it's like when we're getting into universal love unconditional love if love doesn't have an object then it just means wow that must be the goal that I'm going for because the ego has made an object to focus the love on and that object is a substitute for the real thing in other words in heaven there's this perfect love light perfect understanding and everything and all power and glory are oh god what do we have in this world when somebody talks about power you may talk about hydroelectric power solar power, military power the power of persuasion interpersonal power the power of positive thinking think of all the different things that power goes under in this world and none of them have anything to do with real power because none of them have anything to do with god no electricity no solar power power of persuasion what good is the power of persuasion going to do even heaven who is there to persuade you know or you've heard they have a very powerful personality oh do they, huh do you think in heaven there are powerful personalities there is no personality in heaven, heaven personality is a mess so think of that we have puppy love we have romantic love we have love of your country love of your heritage sports teams I love my New York Yankees I love my bumper stickers I heart and fill in the blank all the things wait a minute those are all what? substitutions for the real thing has no object love has no object love just is it doesn't objectify at all so this is what we're looking at that the ego has seemed to lure the mind to sleep away from the king of heaven and now it's got to come out with substitutions why would you stay in a barren place that was totally loveless why would you stay in a desert what would be the point of staying in a desert unless the ego made up substitutes and so it constructs substitutes for the real thing and tries to lure the mind to fall for the substitutes and then the mind does and it feels guilty because it's still not waking up to its true reality so this is the game of the ego to make substitutes for the real thing and to get you to fall for the substitutes and when you begin to wake up spiritually you start to say I am not going to fall for this I'm not going to bite anymore I'm not going to fall for the temptations the lures of the substitutes because there's something greater there's something real that awaits me if I simply will give my willingness to open to it this is really exposing the ego exposing the game this is the kind of stuff the ego does not want you to know about because it's out of business if you start to understand what's really going on underneath you simply cease to play the game there was one time Helen Shuckman was the scribe of the Course and she was sitting one day and Jesus again started speaking in her mind and Jesus asked Helen Shuckman a question and the question was what do you do if you find yourself in a desert and Helen said this is some kind of game or riddle from Jesus imagine Jesus Christ saying to you what do you do if you find yourself in a desert and she she just pondered and pondered and pondered she just could not answer him how should I answer you Lord and finally Jesus gave the answer leave and that is equally applicable for all of us again if the world was wicked evil you would drop it like a hot potato you would leave immediately but the ego has not turned this world into wicked evil so though I can make it I can do better than that I can make at least some aspects of it attractive but it's like this world you do not leave this world in part you have to decide to leave for sure or not it's not like maybe maybe gets you into reincarnation maybe maybe maybe you could spend thousands of years and maybe maybe won't get you there but once you get to the point of getting past the lures and the attractions then it's like okay my maybe is changed to okay yes unless we had the song yesterday the power of goodbye some of you might have seen the movie the Truman Show case I don't see you good afternoon good evening and good night it's over goodbye so in practical terms in my life I say goodbye to everything that doesn't have a purpose a great name essentially so everything that I can say what is this for if it's work if it seems to be helpful in removing the blocks then it's then it has a purpose right I'm following a thought here it has a purpose so anything that doesn't seem to have a purpose for removal of blocks is the hot potato and you know that and then once you get into that then the rest of the journey becomes very simplified because then it's simply transfer of training like you can start to go boom boom boom all these different aspects of your experience on earth you can say okay you may even get a piece of paper out or a notebook out and say okay here's all the things that I'm dealing with on a daily basis you know I've got I've got house, I've got cars I've got children I've got life insurance I've got health insurance I've got automobile insurance I've got homeowner's insurance I've got medical insurance I've got a retirement plan I've got you know just really all of it from the perspective of how does it serve you like that's what I've been doing all these gatherings for 17 years like insurance for example that's an interesting topic you listen to insurance agents talk and they say you know this is a very good thing you know you put some money down as a premium and now everybody a bunch of people put a premium down and then if one the money gets used to help that rebuild that house sounds like a good sell then then I come in and I'm not really a good insurance salesman I say no, insurance is a bet against yourself you're wagering you go in and buy health insurance you're wagering let's say you put down $900 it's a $900 bet that you'll get sick as what you say you put $10,000 in health insurance that's a $10,000 bet that you'll get sick and the only way that you collect and you win the bet is to get sick insurance people don't like this they say get him out of here this kind of reasoning is not it's a ruining business or life insurance they say you buy $100,000 health insurance policy or $200,000 you have to pay maybe hundreds or tens of hundreds or thousands of dollars of premiums to maintain your life insurance that's a bet that you're going to die I don't even believe that I can die now so I wouldn't do a good beginning of life insurance policy for what people say well if not for you David bury the body or do something like that my grandfather Heinrich Hermann Hofmeister they used to ask him what are you going to do when you die and Heinrich Hermann Harry would say throw the body over the side of the hill it's about how much concern he had for the body throw the body over the hill I love that just with legal legal constraints maybe we could find some rare island of Fiji or whatever it's uninhabited burn it or whatever but you start to see health insurance as a bet that you're going to get sick and life insurance is a bet that you're going to die and the only way you collect is to get sick and to die then you start to rethink these things like well is it really that important and then when you get into these things some people will say well life insurance isn't for you it's for your survivors who are these survivors where are these survivors there is no people have said when you die the world will go on what if the world is just a figment of imagination that's in your mind and when you let go of the figment the figment is gone people think that when a person dies that the world just continues on but once you start to realize that it's like a projection of the mind and it really isn't there at all it's like in quantum physics it's just a total projection and that when you give up the ego then the projection disappears and you were just fooled by the projection it wasn't like there's something so you don't have anybody to leave any money to you don't have to worry about leaving money and property because there isn't nobody to do that you see it's like a whole this is not going to go over well in the insurance business or the cemetery business because they make a big deal out of death tombstones and mining property and investing even ensuring property even insist that you have locks and securities in your house otherwise it's not covered which is a double demand you know you're now buying into being robbed as well it's not that they have theft insurance but now you're going to be able to buy locks and it's actually a proven fact that the people with the most locks get the most market profits it's a fact isn't it they don't like that you like us who link the laundry door out in all day and nobody ever comes in but I don't insure my house I'm probably the only one I know about I don't believe I insure my house I'm calling for it to go on fire it's funny too I get being done all this work with spirituality somebody within the last month who was on the spiritual network sent me an alert send me all the virus alerts this was an alert they've invented thieves for years they said it's a type of key that you can slide in and it's got some kind of rubber thing and you can shake it and shake it and it will get the tumbler inside most keys will line up with this device and then you can just open any door it's like it's terrible, it's available on the internet now for $19.95 I was like I was like how new ya it's like how they invented just a simple device for $19.95 that you can just jiggle for a while and then it just opens any lock except they have then locks, we have special locks more expensive locks this can't open but also this thing of sharing there was a time there was basically ownership around movies and music and so forth that artists are really concerned about there was a I think it was a Chinese young man who I think when he was 17 he developed a file sharing program on the internet it was called Nutella and basically what it was was that individual computers all over the world could share electronic files with no sense of monitoring there's no sense of a government or a central he developed a technology where you could share movies music any kind of information completely in a way that it could not be monitored so this was a very important technology because suddenly on the internet people were sharing everything and to the world this was disaster this is like this is the end of capitalism this is the end of whatever of reciprocity I mean if everything could be freely shared I asked because I thought wow the whole teachings of the course is that only the thoughts of God can be freely shared and so this is a symbol on the internet 17 year old Chinese boy came up with a way of doing this but there is no way to stop it or monitor it it was like there was a music sharing program there was huge lawsuits about Napster initially because Napster had a central monitoring point but people were sharing all this music and all these files and of course it was shut down and the world has its ways but this is what I mean by finding symbols that the world as we've known that is coming to an end and you can prepare for that now by releasing all these crazy thoughts and beliefs in ownership and possession and control because only the ego sponsors those beliefs and only the ego will be tormented and distraught over what seems to be a breakdown of its world of its society it's happening in fact it's over and done actually when you were speaking earlier on about fear in Joe in the old testament it came by fear and that is too very valid that you fear as people who have fear that their child would be knocked down crossing the road and they were carried up crossing the road and there are so many examples again it plays right into the insurance companies and it's because we insurans and we worry we fear because we fear being involved so fear is as powerful as faith because it is almost like a faith in God that's right the law of attraction and we could call it just the divine law as you sow so shall you reap and what goes around comes around giving and receiving are the same and you can call it by anything that you want and that's what you're talking about but it's the fear as well and what Jesus says is right now that very law but it will ultimately release you in other words you're just misusing the law as long as you have fear in your mind you're drawing and attracting to yourself fearful reflections or witnesses consequences but it's the same law that will set you free when you realize the power of the mind and what the law is not that the law of attraction can be used to bring material abundance and you think that that will actually free you from this world because that's sometimes what you see with some people who say I was attracting nothing only witnesses of scarcity but now I have the Maserati and the mansion and the flow made and all these other things so that now I'm using the law of attraction to bring myself material abundance because again, abundance is not material in my mind it has nothing to do with the material realm so that would be we would say or mentioned you brought up the law of attraction you might say someone may say I was ignorant of it but then I became aware of it and then I started to use it in a very productive way and now I'm a billionaire or a billionaire or something like this that would be still not really getting at what the law really is thinking of receiving out of the same and sowing and weeping are there but what you really want to sow is thoughts of God and what you want to reap is eternal life not some material outcome which will never bring you eternal life it's still flying into the egos looking for a form outcome so it's good it's just where the human kind have been misusing the eternal law we do have a movie called Solaras which basically as they get closer to this planet then they start to become more aware of this divine law but then they it's just a speed up like an MTV last night they start to see that they really start to get down to what do I really want once you start to get closer to the divine law that question becomes more and more important what is it that I truly value what is it that I truly want we started a session there with the responsibility of the state I thought maybe you could go through each of these lines and differentiate between what's manifestation and how to look at it because it seems like some of these lines can be easier it's like I'm responsible for what I see in the section of the universe it's already 20 I'm responsible for what I see yeah the correct interpretation of that would be I'm responsible for how I see in other words for the perspective that I look upon seeing perception of the world so I know that that line right there has been misused I've seen course teachers use it with students and say I am responsible for what I see you're responsible for the starving children in Africa you're responsible for AIDS you're responsible for that tsunami you're responsible and the students are like I get there and the students are bound up in guilt they feel guilty guilty guilty the courses made me really feel guilty because look it says I am responsible for what I see and I look on the news and I think I did all of that no no no you're responsible for how you see it you're responsible actually for seeing it with the Holy Spirit that you are responsible for and if you try to take responsibility for anything other than seeing it with the Holy Spirit you're going to get into guilt of course because how could you not this wacky crazy distorted world including when the Bible would say the body has a certain sickness to say I'm responsible for that it's the same error same error you're responsible for how you see the world and how you see the body including of course the Holy Spirit's perspective is really where the true responsibility lies so yeah that would again be a misuse of the responsibility work because you would get into guilt and when you hear people say I created this cancer oh yeah and I feel guilty well of course I mean if you're going to use the book that way you're going to feel guilty because it's like I did this it's like the course is saying now you're responsible for how you're looking upon the world are you going to look upon the world through the ego's personal perspective or through the Holy Spirit's whole perspective you always have those choices so which interpretation am I going to see wholeness or fragmentation how I see the world is my choice Alan Schumann is that from the Czechman? Yeah, the Rote do I understand right the conversation that that made us that she wasn't happy with what she wrote she had went ahead and wrote it all but yet she didn't follow it on it was like a split mind that she she was like a channel or a scribe and the point I'm making is you are responsible for what you see how do you see it? yeah but it says in there you are responsible for what you see that's what it says yeah so is it your interpretation that what she's actually saying is you are responsible for how yeah it's actually Jesus wrote the book she just put the words in I wouldn't move the pen the shorthand but she didn't write the book she scribed the book from Jesus in fact Jesus would have her tell her just like you received the poetry would come and then she would write it down and then he would often have to go back and say what I said was this what you wrote was this ego would even write something different than what Jesus told her he'd have to go back and correct correct for 7 years to get this but Jesus wrote this book so to speak these words come from an awakened mind now in terms of the interpretation what Jason is doing is even beings read this book and the words are from Jesus but they read the books with the ego filter and they will misuse they will not grasp the meaning of what he's actually trying to teach and they will you know the ego can misuse scripture you know they can misuse in form including words we've seen what happened with the Bible over the years the crusades killing Muslims in the name of Jesus and you know the ego can misuse anything so what we're doing here is simply is a call for clarity because these very words in this section have been misused by of course miracle students and teachers and they still feel guilty they don't feel happy joyful released so I'm just trying to give a meaning or we're just trying to explore the accurate interpretation the most helpful interpretation of the words that basically Jesus sees I just find it funny really you know if God zoomed into Ellen you know to put that down why didn't you say how you see things oh he does in many places it's just in this particular line what I see you know it can be interpreted in different ways and what we're trying to zoom into is what is the helpful meaning all these words are just pointing at a perspective or a meaning and the words can't get you there in other words some people say this is scripture and like you're saying if Jesus really meant how then why didn't he put how well yeah you see because if I read that you know you are responsible for what you're saying that would be it full stop I've worked with students they'll come to me they find every contradiction in the book and Jesus used the wrong words you should have done this and this and this and all of that is just seeking to change the world this is the world this is the world and even when we want to edit Jesus and go oh in fact that's what Helen did when she was taking all this down she said to Bill one time if he misspells one word that's all it's like looking for a reason to dump Jesus if he misspells one word it's over but she was into literature and things being this right so I worked with students with this book and they would go through and they would aha they would come to the session and go they have one thing circled in the court another thing circled and another thing circled and they go look he's contradicting himself why should I believe in this book why should I even do the course anymore because he's contradicting himself no he's not he's using a bunch of metaphors in a way that is designed to be as helpful as it can but it would be like if you were in a lost country somewhere in a lost time of space and Jesus lower down a ladder down into your situation and said climb okay then there was a lot of rungs on that ladder in other words the ladder is like a climbing device that's what this is it's just a climbing device and the only way that you can climb is with your willingness when you start to get in there and start to get into particulars like the students were trying to catch Jesus and say he could have used a better word he contradicts himself here this and that this is a climbing device why would you compare one rung to another rung all he's saying is grab hold anywhere grab hold anywhere on the ladder and climb so simple can that be but what happens when the ego mind gets in there which is an analysis and so forth we're trained to analyze it starts to actually try to analyze the climbing device even for like near the top rungs you're like well I didn't plan that rung down there I mean you got not doing it right yeah you got missed a step or what I the metaphor I said one time that Jeffrey loves so much was camping out on a rung there are those that get to a rung and they go good enough I get my pucks head let's set up the the barbecue here and this is kind of what we were talking about with Mary Williamson you can actually make a pretty nice career and you feel fairly good most of the time and you get to keep a little bit of the world and a little bit of God it's a problem but I'll mark a flag here and then I said no camping no camping on the rungs the rungs are simply for pushing pushing off of and climbing because it's a climbing device why would you camp on a ladder the exact point of hanging there on the ladder you know you're meant to climb and push off the entire ladder and let the ladder go is really what he's saying he's just saying out words with symbols twice removed from reality see you're on about Mary Ann Williamson doing the casting miracles and then writing books based on that so she's quite comfortable spiritually the book then she's got the other side you know the human what you've just said I think I would say comfortable with that book until they don't need it anymore then they get comfortable as long as you need it you're not going to be comfortable with that the point I'm saying is that you're saying that Mary Ann Williamson has done the casting miracles and then sort of moved on to the peace movement which isn't in line with that you're on about rungs of the ladder this was our discussion yesterday about how this is a course that's embedded enlightenment and self-realization it doesn't have anything to do with world peace because world peace isn't oxymoron you can have a peaceful perception of the world but you will never have world peace as the world defines it in terms of it's an undoing of all definitions and concepts of of ecological terms in terms of go green save the planet, what planet it just absolutely pops all the definitions of absolutely everything the point I'm making is on the rungs of the ladder you are all at the top of the ladder of yeah I see it that way we're off the top actually we're off the ladder if you go halfway up the ladder and stop there is that okay? I say no camping this is the point I'm making that you are truly 100% I say no camping in fact with Geoffrey I would just say no camping on the rungs why is because they're meant to be pushed off of you're meant to go to self-realization is the whole point of everything so why would you want to stop short of knowing who you are it will feel better on the rungs you see the point that I'm making is you know we're all sat here now and it's absolutely fantastic and then we'll go all separate ways but you're still in this cocoon I don't think people can go separate ways it's once you realize that everyone's in your mind then it solves everything but as soon as you think there's a world out there that people could actually go out there and go their separate ways and walk a lonely path and struggle and so on and so forth then that would be rather depressing you know as you were saying when you were watching MTV it seemed a bit depressing but what I'm saying is is it's really possible to go all the way and it's really possible to use the climbing device to just climb you're saying no camping and no camping and what I'm saying is that when I leave here today I will be on you know rungs of the ladder but I will be camping do you see what I'm saying Margaret, if you're a climber I've never seen you as a gepper I'm not saying you're on the stage we're all climbing but what I think is being seen is that you're going to continue learning so you're not going to stay there for very long because you're not going to go home and stop learning the same you're going to be practicing it so you can only keep going even today you're on the stage on a certain level but what you're saying you're on about like insurance buying this I love doing photography and I had the guilt complex and I had an exhibition to make money and I started feeling guilty about that so I had the exhibition and I gave all the money to the hospice and I was going to stop doing photography and I thought no don't and I'm carrying on with it or I have to sell it to produce it so this is what I'm getting at yeah this is good though these are the very kind of things we want you to bring up because I've worked with people who had no money who had lots of money who had been the head of companies and whenever you're doing anything out of the motivation of guilt like even getting money to a charity if you're doing it out of guilt you're just reinforcing the guilt in your mind because it's the motive for which you do something we were talking about this last night with Therese about the corporate world and what's the motive behind things is the crucial things not whether you seem to have resources or don't but it's what's the motive what is the purpose for it so then Jackie bought the thing in a practical way to say okay so I should just look at her view of its photography there's other aspects maybe painting and other things and I should look at what is it for really truly you know am I using this for my awakening or do I have another purpose for it and if I have another purpose for it she was saying well that's just to keep me stuck in the world so I don't need to keep that purpose for that thing or maybe even that thing that purpose so what I was doing was talking about transfer of training saying well let's say you make a list of a lot of aspects of your life and you start to just honestly and open-eyed look at those things according to the purpose that you have for it it's not saying the thing the photography is good or bad as I know many people that are into art and photography but one time I did a gathering in Michigan and I started talking about idols and how on earth you can seem to worship idols and it just brings you no true happiness to this guilt and the Bible said have no idols before the Lord thy God so I was giving this talk and this man suddenly his name was Steve he came up to me and he was like oh they were a terrible idol I feel so bad about it now and he went on and on about this terrible idol and terrible idol and I said well what is your terrible idol and he said I have a sailboat and it's a pretty big one it sleeps aid and da da da but I polish it and paint it and I trace like my baby I put all my time and energy into this sailboat it's just a terrible idol and I said I know a way out of your idol and he said what and I said take your course of miracles group out sailing and he said his eyes lit up see it was just a slight tweak in purpose of the purpose of the boat from an identity attachment that was an extension of his identity to giving the boat over to the Holy Spirit and it sleeps aid why not go do a course of miracles retreat it was like wow this is the same as photography or art or anything it's like what purpose does it serve that's where the sorrow or the joy will come from so you shouldn't if you have this beautiful photography and then you start feeling guilty about it in some way then the best thing to do will be just ask the Holy Spirit what would you have me do in a way that would be helpful it would bless everyone and will receive a guidance or instruction on what would be the helpful way just giving away money I had a friend of mine who had lots of money and she had lots of guilt too and she would like to give away extra bonuses at work at Christmas time she was given envelopes of money out to family members cousins, people they were waiting at Christmas time to come around to go to her house to get a bundle in that envelope and the more she worked with me she said by golly I've been giving money away out of guilt to alleviate the guilt and I feel just as guilty that's where I give it away in fact they're like leeches now people lined up I feel like I've got to give it away and I still feel guilty so I said giving the money away to alleviate the guilt is not going to work so we had to go much deeper into her mind to find out what the Holy Spirit was guiding her to do as opposed to her ego ideas so that's why you've just shown up you didn't have a lot of prior spiritual training and ideas just last year you just kind of showed up at the retreat and said okay this is wonderful I'm going for it so it's more like Jesus had lowered his ladder down and you went and just grabbed grabbed on and now all I'm saying is you don't have to evaluate and judge the runs in any way or where anyone else seems to be or where everyone else seems to be that's just at your time okay you see where I was going though you know with it all with my photography I find it really peaceful and really exciting when you create something you know that you're really like then you just give it to the Holy Spirit and say what would you have me to with it we were just talking about this morning about yoga thank you for asking the same question she does yoga in the morning and was saying well it's kind of body focused so should I throw that out if it seems to be focused on the body so we just talked about purpose and it seems to be helpful it's a peaceful experience she reads a course and has the lesson in her mind and moves through the yoga and it's helpful so it's not the thing that you seem to do that's good or bad it's just really very gently asking does it seem helpful what is it for yeah yeah I'll follow that you raise the second hand see what you've caused yeah that was the shortest one market covers are out I choose the feelings I experience and I decide upon the goal I would achieve so the first one is I'm responsible for what I've seen feelings I experience and I decide upon the goal I would achieve so really there's happiness or no happiness from that perspective it makes sense however easing this understood in terms of I'm going to choose frustration I'm going to choose a specific emotion so that's what the distortion becomes as if you manifest particular feelings from your personal self yeah it's basically there's love and fear in the metaphorical sense in that we would say that anger and anxiety and depression and envy and jealousy those are all aspects of fear you know because he's saying you have but two emotions so again everything is designed to simplify and even if you wanted to go beyond love and fear you could say one is comfortable and one is you know one is feels good and one feels upsetting and basically the choices is coming about as you go much deeper based on what you want what you desire is what you will feel and what you will perceive but the first one was really the responsibility where it came in I think that's where people you know get hung up I was thinking you know if I'm responsible for fear or I'm responsible for error or distortions or whatever then it would seem like guilt is justified and we were taking it to the highest point of saying really you're responsible for choosing a correction and it's the same with the feelings you are responsible for choosing happiness God's will for you is perfect happiness and there is no choice in heaven but while you believe in duality you are responsible for choosing happiness and it isn't great that you're responsible for choosing happiness you know that it's something that you can choose it's always available it's never a moment when happiness is not available and that goes with do you want what we've said before do you want to be happy you know it doesn't matter you don't need to be right it's got my point of argument you don't need to be right it doesn't matter how free in is that how do you feel in your body so much fear in the doozy line and everything that seems to happen to me I ask for and receive as I have asked that's the version that all things work together for good it's in the Bible and everything that seems to happen to me I ask for receive as I have asked now people will say well if you break that up again into discrete specific events and you look at things like heart attacks or cancer or automobiles or money coming to you or money being taken away from you or all those kind of things those are all specific situations and specific events and the goal of the course is to see a unified world it's to see that those specifics are a part of the distorted way of perceiving and so it's kind of like as long as you perceive that last thing from a linear perspective everything that seems to happen to me I ask for and receive as I have asked you can go wow thank you I'm glad I asked for all the good things and I'm cursed and feel guilty for all the bad things that I asked for but it's still seeing it from a very linear perspective when the whole purpose of the course is to unify perception all things work together for good we're not saying you have to accept the good with the bad we're saying you have to transcend the perspective of good and bad you have to actually reach a state of detachment or a higher above the battleground Jesus calls it where you move away from the linear perspective and you move into the either the vertical or I call it the point the perspective of the point which is that everything is unified so that's why you know understanding these things I would say that just that whole passage that we just read Responsibility for Sight is basically saying you know you can choose happiness you can choose love you can choose joy in any moment it's always available and what goes along with that is there is never a reason to blame or point the finger at anything or anyone as if something was done to you that you didn't ask for that's the value of the passage and so what that passage does is it really starts to eliminate projection as if there's something else that made me feel this way it undoes that whole false way of thinking is that people can make a spill a certain way circumstances can make us feel a certain way and start to realize no I'm crime responsible I choose the feelings I experience and I can choose to feel love and peace so as soon as you try to relate that last sentence with a specific event coming to me because of something I've done or chosen that's where the error is to bring it up to a higher level and so on the screen things seem to happen that's one decision I'm off the screen I'm detached from it all a miracle there's a line what is a miracle a miracle does not create nor really change at all it merely looks upon devastation and reminds the mind of what it sees as false that's a definition from Jesus about what is a miracle looks upon devastation and reminds the mind of what it sees as false well that must be from a higher perspective a miraculous perspective you can't look at something from a human perspective and feel peace how do you look on a tsunami from a human perspective and feel peace how do you look on an earthquake or a hurricane or a tornado or Katrina how could you look it from a human perspective and feel peace you can't but you're being asked to see it from a higher perspective from a spiritual perspective and that's the value of that's what all these words in the Course are pointing towards that mind training towards that spiritual perspective not to get hung up on the words you might think of the words as like little pointing devices you know and people have read words for many centuries I would use Mary Baker Eddie as an example the founder of Christian Science she simply read the same Bible that hundreds and thousands of other people were reading all over the place and kept praying to the Holy Spirit for an interpretation what you meant by this what does this scripture mean she didn't try to decipher it in human terms she simply prayed for inspiration for a higher interpretation and she simply used that technique to reach a very lofty state of healed mind just using the Bible that's why when people will say the Bible is so crude and I've got the Course now the Bible messed me up the Bible is to blame for someone's state of mind no, it's just a bunch of images it's just another ladder the Bible is just another ladder you still have to have the willingness and the faith to climb no matter what tool that you're using so there's no point in comparing the tools or saying this tool is better than that tool that's never helpful can you say that now? it does not create or really change at all it merely looks on devastation and reminds the mind that what it sees is false