 by the Holy Spirit. Because even though people's lives are not happy and fulfilled in times, there is a familiarity to linear time. And the Holy Spirit is associated with the unknown, something that will be completely different than anything in time. In the state of heaven the mind is naturally in a state of peace. But the first fear that seemed to be experienced was the fall from grace. And it was a tremendous shift in mind, from loving and peaceful and happy to terrifying and frightening. So each step that you take with the Holy Spirit will have some reverberations of fear associated with it. Because even though you are awakening from a nightmare, the ego is afraid of this awakening. It's afraid that it will be annihilated. It's afraid that it will cease to exist. And that's why sometimes people will refer to a course of miracles as brainwashing. To the world brainwashing is terrifying because it is losing a sense of control over your own thoughts. When people say to me, it sounds like brainwashing, I will say, oh it is mindwashing. But you don't need to be afraid of it. You just need to surrender into it. So it does come down to the issue of control. And that's really what George Orwell's novel is about. It's about the fear and control. To the ego the Holy Spirit is controlling. To the ego the Holy Spirit is dismantling its whole world. But let us take for a moment time to look at the difference between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit never commands and never demands. The Holy Spirit only offers suggestions and reminders. The Holy Spirit offers helpful instructions. But you can always tell that it is the ego in your mind. It feels like a threat or a command or a demand. The Holy Spirit never offers an ultimatum because that would be coercive. And the Holy Spirit does not use force, does not force anyone. The Holy Spirit must wait until you voluntarily offer the thoughts of the least to him. So in this sense the Holy Spirit is different from Orwell's big brother. Because that big brother is based on control. And the Holy Spirit is based on giving up control. Now there is a positive use of the word control in A Course in Miracles. Jesus says that you can control the direction of your thinking. Meaning you can actually train your mind to align with God and the Holy Spirit instead of the ego. And there is another use of control that is very helpful in A Course in Miracles. Jesus says you have no control over the world you made. And that is implying that true happiness comes from surrender of control. It would be like going to a movie theater and watching a movie. And the ego would say you could talk to the characters and say no stop doing that. I want you to do something different. But the Holy Spirit knows that it's a movie and the movie has already been filmed. And this is why you cannot control people or behaviors. It is even frustrating if you think you have direct control over your own body. You think I should be able to make it lose weight or be more fit or whatever. But the body is part of a prearranged script. And again you can only control the direction of your thinking. This is why behavior modification never really works. So you quit smoking or you lose weight. The ego says I have many other problems we can throw in here. You spend 10 years losing 40 pounds. You quit smoking and you're still as angry as you were at the beginning. And that's why Jesus says it's with your thoughts that we must work. We have to change the way that you think. From thinking with the ego to thinking with God. And when you're thinking is a lot to be irrelevant. Do you really think Jesus was ever concerned about his hair or his weight? You know imagine he says Peter, John I'm having a bad hair day today. Or stop feeding me. I've put on 20 pounds. I have manna from heaven and I'm not going to listen to you anymore. You know it seems funny because it's really the thoughts. It's about changing our thinking. So if you follow what I'm saying you'll see that you can stop worrying about behavior. Because what you do comes from what you think. And if you hear what I'm saying you'll devote all your attention and effort into mind training. So I reached a point in my life where I realized that I was going to put all my effort into mind training. Before that I was into physical fitness. I played tennis and golf and basketball. I went weight training you know did all this stuff to try to improve the body. But once I started doing the course I realized that I needed to put all of my effort into mind training. Before the course I would go to movies to escape from the suffering in my life and distract away. And after the course I would go to movies to let my emotions come up and to pray throughout the movie. And ask the Holy Spirit to show me what I needed for healing. Before the course I hated to travel. But after the course came into my life I was willing to do whatever would be helpful for the healing of my mind. So this body has traveled tens of thousands of miles but it's been fun. So it really comes down to the mind training just the willingness to do the mind training. And you learn to trust the Holy Spirit and let go of trying to control anything in the world.