 the flow of the miracle it's all about the connecting and the joining and it's not about anything else you know you're not only not a fault finder but you're not your perception is not looking for problems looking for errors it's just tuned into this call for love that really everybody regardless of appearances just wants to feel this love and this connection wasn't focused on the body and therefore the joy was there the joy of connecting and we come from a conditioning and a culture and a society that's all ego based on finding problems and diagnosing problems in form and once you start with the curriculum of the course it will take you deeper and deeper into states of acceptance into states of peace and non-judgment in which you really do not become focused on the form you know the form doesn't grab your attention anymore it doesn't distract you because you don't find value in that and putting judgments on on the form the spirit will just keep guiding and guiding and guiding more to a state of detachment where the form is irrelevant and and perception is selective I mean I remember I was here in Australia several years ago and and at the end of the gathering I had a wonderful gathering and I left and then on the way back home the organizer was saying he was apologizing for the drunk man at the gathering who was so belligerent and I was like I must have missed that I didn't I didn't even remember a drunk man at the gathering means your perception becomes more and more unified in the joy and you you really have a unified perspective in the whole thing and therefore the things that the people identify as problems made an apologize for you don't even notice they go they're not in your awareness so that's how perception works we just become more and more trained in the miracle and then what would seem to be distractions they they don't have any space you don't have space in your mind for distractions or interruptions for whatever you just so focused on your purpose that the rest just starts to fade away it knows that the mind of sleeping and dreaming of this world has a self-concept we talked about the personality self that's an aspect of the self-concept it's the personality self and the entire world and causes that surrounds that personality self it's all part of any a giant mask like a cosmic mask and the only way out of this trap of this mask is is to be given almost like successive masks that you you know just like in Halloween children don't always wear the same mask you know every Halloween they wear different masks year and year and teacher of God or healer or you know whatever those are masks as well and the course and presence of the Holy Spirit will take the mind deeper and deeper on a journey of eventually laying aside all the masks and having one final mask we'll call it the mask of forgiveness as in eternity and in the kingdom of heaven there are no masks at all and there's no forgiveness in heaven there's no need for it everything's pure oneness so it's almost like you're going to go through successive masks and and at every point there's still going to be judgments involved you know even for someone that was identified as being like a mystic or a saint it's still a mystic mask or a saint mask and you know it's always going to be masks in this world and to the extent that it still seems to be identified as personal in any way even in the faintest smallest way there's still going to be the sense of guilt that will arise from time to time and the guilt sounds like you fake you phony if the people knew what you're thinking and what you're going to they wouldn't be kissing your feet if they knew that this and that so you know it's just going to go in that direction but but the Holy Spirit has to keep exchanging these masks to let you kind of move up the ladder of consciousness so each time you exchange a mask the mask gets a little more expensive it's much more expensive it's much more closer to wholeness and just keeps on going that way so the thing about it is that you always have to be authentic in other words you've never asked to pretend there's no part of the Course of Miracles where Jesus says just fake it till you make it it's not in there he's big on authenticity he's big on being in touch with your emotions and sharing your emotions and so you know the kind of groups that I work with in the communities I work with you know we have these expression sessions and always authenticity is encouraged because it's such a deep journey and you don't want to feel like you hope you have to hold back on certain things if you for example are like a counselor or a teacher and you have clients you know and that's a mechanism that the Holy Spirit is using for purification and anytime we're in social social work at any time where we have lots of clients or patients that we see it's like having bunches of mirrors coming at you and you you get to have a session and then you can go wow showed a lot about me in that session whether they went away happy or not or whatever you can say wow that really showed me a lot about what I'm still believing about myself holding on to so that's why we have say saying such as you know physician healed by self you know the spirits always reminding us that it's our own lesson and it's a very very deep journey so when those contradictions come up it's okay it's perfectly wonderful it's like you're just allowing those contradictions into awareness just so that they can be released and then as you release a few more contradictions we'll say the guidance is always there in terms of the next step we just take another step of ladder of consciousness and then they'll be at the next and the next and we just to the best of our ability we try not to put any limits on this opening on this journey that we're taking we let you know it's like love lift us up to where we belong you know take us higher and higher towards that that final concept that final self concept of forgiveness of a forgiven world of a happy dream you know or the real world Jesus talks about and and it's just great to know that you don't really have to hide and protect anything you can keep continuing on the journey this spiritual journey it requires so much allowance and permission I mean it's at times when you start to really allow the darkness to surface it does feel paralyzing and it can feel very disorienting disjunctive it can feel intense and overwhelming and in that sense that's really why you have to be patient you have to work with the Holy Spirit because it can seem like the emotions the more you allow them to come they can almost feel disabling and it definitely feels like a split you're having these moments of miraculous gratitude joy and connection and then it's like what is this like oh and I was doing so well and all of a sudden whammo and that's why you know it takes a lot of faith and trust in the whole movement in the whole process and it's also why we've had those a lot of discussions about spiritual community whether you just have a partner that you're matched up with in a beautiful vibrational way they can hold space for allowing those emotions up without taking it personally or you have a group of people might be companions that that are reminders that hold that sense of spaciousness while that's coming up it's not going to a birth canal you know it's and you really have to to give yourself full permission to to go through it and you know then you start to see that the whole spiritual journey is not all just peaches and cream it's you know it's working through these emotions and so that's what I did my life had a lot of aspects of just crying and tears just pouring through and pouring out and everything and a lot of sense of patience of just like okay it's gonna look however it looks I'm not gonna judge it and shut it off I'm gonna let it spin out and let it blow through I'm gonna let it you know really reach what it needs to do without trying to shut it off and that's really the faith that it takes to be on this journey of as the course is going through the darkness to the light and not just kind of just you know trying to guard against those emotions to just hold it together you know maintain a sense of pseudo peace because it's whatever spiritually metaphysically correct you know but you really let yourself move through it so I know we've talked quite a bit about that and that's why these unfolding communities are are helpful and even with course groups they can be a support you know to go through this emotional change although the deeper you go that you sometimes you may even find yourself outgoing your course group if you're going through a lot of these emotions and you find everybody's fishing in your group and there's a lot of anxiety in there it may be that you kind of you have to be open to this very giving you the symbol of another step that will help you in my case I I was guided to hermitages it's like oh let all rage and block this up exactly how am I supposed to do that well hermitage okay I find the trees and rocks are are very it can maintain great stillness and but see again the spirit guided me you know it was like you will be provided with everything that you need and those were very valuable times