 And Isaac Newton built his whole teaching on empiricism, on measuring a linear world. And that's how we get the modern scientific method. His all-coming Sir Isaac Newton was the reflection in time and space that said, this is how the world is, and this is how we discover the world through measuring it, through looking, using the five senses to discern what's actually happening in there. To realize that Isaac Newton was completely off and that about six, seven decades ago quantum physics was discovered by a group of scientists that were so embarrassed by their findings, so shocked by what they discovered in their experiments, that they were afraid to publish their findings to their scientific community. Be like telling your mom and dad, none of us are really here. Finish your green beans, or no dessert. That's how they felt about publishing their results, that there was no objective world, that there was no world apart from consciousness, that the entire perceived world of linear time is entirely subjective, and it's based on the beliefs and preferences of the mind that's perceiving it. That there is no objective world. Think about that the next time you have a problem with your partner. There is no objective world. It's lesson number two from A Course in Miracles. I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me. If you've got difficulties with your partner, they're aggravating to you, they're frustrating, they're disgusting in something that they think, say, or do, their behaviors or whatever, you have to believe it before you can perceive it. In order to, if you spot it, you got it. That's the one I use the easiest way to remember. Next time you are tempted to get upset, go, if I spot it, I got it. If I spot laziness, if I spot vulnerability, if I spot anything, even the positive aspects. If you spot something that's prideful or you think that somebody's much better than you at speaking or doing this or doing this and this and this, you have to actually believe that before you can perceive it in the world. It never really leaves your mind. Ideas leave not their source. And in heaven, Christ has never left the mind of God and in this world we'll say, the split mind, the ideas never leave the mind of the thinker. So that's why I'm responsible for what I see. I choose the feelings I experience. I decide upon the goal I would achieve and everything that seems to happen to me, I ask for and receive as I have asked. Where is all this heading? Well, as you ascend in your mind, you will feel less and less human progressively. It's not really ultimately a matter of more or less, but the way that it will play out, most are given a gradual curriculum in time. Nobody is hurled into eternity, so you don't have to worry about getting hurled into eternity, but most are given a progressive awakening experience in which you feel less and less and less human and more and more consistently joyful because the joy is coming from your purpose, from your purpose of forgiving the world. But you can see that if you're not at the beginning, you just have to humbly say, okay, if I can't even tell the difference between pain and joy, then I need a lot of help, not a little help. If I can't tell the difference between pain and joy. So why don't we take a few minutes now to just look at this? Why can't I tell the difference between pain and joy? It's because my mind isn't fully riveted in the wear of the Holy Spirit's purpose. If I was in alignment with the Holy Spirit, I could definitely tell the difference between pain and joy. But where is this confusion coming in? Well, if you go into the course, you find in the text there's three different subheadings. One of them is called Attraction to Guilt, and one of them is called Attraction to Pain, and one of them is called Attraction to Death. Those are three subheadings in one of Jesus's chapter. Just think for a minute how bizarre that sounds. When I first was reading the course, I came across the first one. Oh, wow, that's an interesting title for a subheading. Attraction to Guilt, Attraction to Pain was the next and then Attraction to Death. This course, Jesus is saying you are so attracted and addicted to these things, guilt, pain, and death, that you don't know the addiction. As a human being, you would say, well, I don't think so. That's a bit strong and a bit extreme to say I'm addicted to guilt, pain, and death. But basically, what those little sections do is they show you that pleasure is the same as pain because pleasure and pain, to the human being, they seem extremely different, but pleasure and pain both are the same because they both have the same purpose. They both were invented by the ego to reinforce awareness of the body as your identity. And so whether it's with a particular food or an orgasm or whether it's a throbbing migraine headache, you are really riveted in the body, in awareness through either one. And yet, you see to the ego perception, pain and pleasure are extremely different. But Jesus says in the course, if you read his course, he will tell you they actually are the same because they serve the same purpose of reinforcing the body and awareness. Why is this important? Well, we'll come back to our original premise. If there's a confusion between pain and joy, and joy is following the Holy Spirit without exception for consistent joy, and joy is knowing your purpose is forgiveness, that the only purpose in this world is to forgive, that's where the joy will come from, and then the pain will come from the pursuit of pleasure or pain. I mean, certainly we have like war, bodies killing bodies and disease and many kind of aspects of pain are quite overt, but it's not seen to the sleeping mind that those are the same as the pleasure. All the conveniences and comforts of the mind in this world that are relegated to the images, fantasy, we'll call it, fantasy is the attempt to make false association and Jesus says, and the pain and pleasure for me, those are actually the same. So by the time you get to this manual for teachers, what is the real meaning of sacrifice? It says, Jesus says, God's teachers can have no regrets on giving up the pleasures of the world. You can see how deep that goes. That's exactly where this course is heading. Now, how do you get there? You get there through miracles and you don't get there through this belief in sacrifice. This isn't about necessarily joining a convent or a monastery and trying to pray or meditate all day because those are very traditional attempts to reach God, but until this underlying mechanism is discovered in the mind, this ego purpose I just talked about, then you will just find the acting out of people try to avoid things in the world. And you can almost try to build like a shield around yourself to protect your mind from the world and that won't work either. That won't get you into the kingdom of heaven, even building this shield. So I think we can say from our experience in living together and traveling and experiencing these miracles that these miracles are so simple and so joyful that you are drawn and attracted into the joy. You're actually attracted into the forgiveness. You get all kinds of whims provided because the Holy Spirit can even use your ego's preference system to send you symbols in mind and say, thank you, beloved one, for coming towards me. Thank you for coming and opening up your heart towards me. That's been our experience that our journey has not been, whoa, look at all the sacrifice, look at all that I have to give up in order to serve God, which is like a fear. Aris has been that there's really been no sacrifice at all. I have not felt an ounce of sacrifice in this awakening. It's really just one more profound realization that the life that lives in compromise and in forgetfulness of our identity is the sacrifice. That's truly where the pain, no matter how little that is in awareness, it's still there. We can't deny that we don't feel completely satisfied for reasons we don't even know why. So because of that, there is all this search and all these seekings that's going on, but it's just keep looping around in this world. From maybe material things, then gradually, okay, we've seen the effort of that or the meaninglessness of that, then we started to do spiritual seekings. But it's still, in the realm of this world, in this wrong-minded thinking, if the mind is not completely transformed and lifted above, then there is really no true transformation. So that's why just talk all this about our inability to even discern or even tell the difference between pain, pleasure, and everything. It's really just to come down to, we cannot judge anything. Honestly, we really are not able to judge anything. So forgiveness is the only thing that is of any meaning in this life. Everything else in this life is to reinforce judgment of this world. And forgiveness is the only thing that can lead us out. And what is forgiveness? People actually ask this question a lot, like how to forgive, what is forgiveness? Forgiveness actually takes a lot practical applications. And one of the applications that we use a lot is have Holy Spirit judge through us. We relinquish our own judgment. Because people will say, well, you still have to make certain judgments to be able to function in this world. No, we don't. We don't have to keep any judgment about this world. We don't. We let it all go. We allow the Holy Spirit to tell us what to do and where to go, who to talk to, how to function, where to live. Like everything is completely handed over to the Spirit. And because there is no string attached in our mind, like I don't have a family to go back to, I don't have a private account to think how to use it. So therefore there is nothing in my mind that blocks the Holy Spirit's instruction to me. If he says, you never see your mother for another year, that's not a sacrifice because he will tell me where my mind needs to be directed to and how to, through that, feel the openness and the connectedness with the Spirit. So it's always just allow him to direct every aspect of our lives. And that's why we have a big group who all live together and a lot of the communications around logistics. When we travel this 10 country, 11 country tour and two continent, Europe and South Africa, so all these communication are just completely used to tune into the Spirit. What is Spirit's will for us? How to go there and where to go and who to go. It's just completely, all the life's purpose is just forgiveness. It's just listen to the Spirit and allow him to judge through us before us. And in that, the self, the judgment from the ego is relinquished. So there is no separate forgiveness. I have to make sure that my life, this area is all good. Then how do I apply forgiveness to the little grievances that I have with this person or my neighbor? No, everything has to be forgiven. The good part, I have a beautiful something today that has to be forgiven because that is an ego judgment as well, good and bad, comparison thoughts, competition. I did well today, I didn't do so well yesterday. All of that has to be forgiven and allow the Spirit to come in to tell me, I have no idea what to say and what to do. Just he has to direct me and tell me. So it's just a complete dependence, complete dependence on God and on the Spirit.