workshop. I'm Peter. I'm going to be your host today. So great to see you all. Yeah, we've got a big participation today because we have our online retreat running this weekend, true intimacy and holy relationship retreat. And we also have our movie workshop participants, so a big room. So welcome to you all. For those who are new, I'll just tell you how the day is going to flow. So we're going to start with the movie and David. And then afterwards, we will have a 10 minute break. And then we will have our breakout rooms. And you can share any emotion that comes up for you through the movie. After that, we'll have a 45 minute break. And then I'll be holding the closing session today. So I'll pass it over to you now, David. Okay, thank you, Peter. Welcome. Welcome, everyone. Oh, you're in for a big, big treat today. You're going to be very excited with this movie I'm showing today, and you're going to have all those warm feelings whirling around in your heart by the end of the movie. And that's appropriate since we are have a topic of true intimacy and holy relationship. Why would you not end up with big swirls in your heart? Lots of heart energy moving through you with a topic like this. So I'm excited today because I haven't shown this movie for quite a while, but it's like an old friend. It's always right at the surface of my mind ready to be bursting out. And I have such a great heart opening emotion every time I watch this movie. And I think it's one of our all time classics. So this is perfect for holy relationship and true intimacy. That's what everyone wants. They just want to feel love, lots of it, lots of connection, overflowing love, spilling over all over the place. Love, love, love. That's all we want. Like the Beatles said, all you need is love. So we're going to zoom into it. And actually, as you know, this is part of the holy relationship we can, but we have a large group of people joining us from around the world just for movie day to day, but they're going to get to feel and experience everyone as the day goes on. And we have the breakout rooms. And then Peter comes back to do a Q&A on this movie and all these great themes. So as you know, we put out a movie poll of themes and then you vote on those themes. And then I pray for a movie from Jesus that will really help really help us have a deep experience of those themes. Your most important themes is really what we're aiming for. And this week, I think I mentioned it already on Friday when I was on with Francis, but yeah, the themes for this week, the top theme came in with 112 votes way more than anything else. So it was being 100% dependent on God, Holy Spirit. And we know that that's like the key, of course, that's the key, being God dependent. That just means we want to be guided, that we want to be directed, we want inner instructions, we want our intuition to lead us the way we live. We want to live from the inside out, not from the outside in. Even though in the end, Jesus shows us that the inside is the outside. And the outside is the inside. At the beginning, we don't get that. You know, he's like, Whoa, that's a little too much, Jesus. Let's start with my inner world and that world out there. You know, so Jesus is going to help us today to get more in touch with our intuition, the inner voice, the stillness within. And most importantly, take 100% responsibility for our state of mind. What does that mean? It just means we're finished with the blame game. We're finished blaming. We're not going to do it anymore. We absolutely refuse to do it. Because we feel guilty when we blame, we feel guilty when we project, we feel guilty when we look outside of our mind for false causes, and we try to pin our upset onto the false causes, whether it's diseases or it's the weather or it's politicians or it's our partner or it's our family, whatever it is, it could be a mouse loose in the house. You know, it doesn't matter. Whatever we believe is external to us that's upsetting us is our misperception. And we want this misperception corrected for once and for all.  You know, it's not satisfying. We want to be happy. We want to be loving. We want to be joyful. We don't want to be blaming and then feeling guilty after we blame. So we went out of that game. The second theme is forgiving all thoughts of responsibility, duty, and obligation. And I know that one came in second with 67 votes, but I know that for most people I've talked to in my life over the last 36 years with the course, that's one of their biggest issues is they feel like a sense of obligation and duty and responsibility. And they feel they are lacking in that area. They haven't done enough. They're not enough. They could have done more. There's a sense of, oh my gosh, I wish I could get out under this burden with my, particularly with family members or partners. What did I do wrong? Maybe I missed my chance. Maybe I didn't do enough. This is a huge thing. And I've been talking to a lot of people all around the world for decades about this. And what A Course in Miracles is saying is we actually have one responsibility and that's to accept the correction in our mind, the atonement. It's called, Jesus says that's the sole responsibility for the teacher of God, the sole responsibility for the miracle worker, accept the atonement for yourself. It's actually lesson 139 from the workbook. I will accept the atonement for myself. And this world is the projection of responsibility. So instead of like Jesus saying, oh, I'm 100% responsible for my state of mind, and I choose to be happy. I choose to be one with God. I choose to be one with my creator, which is what Jesus did. That was true responsibility. But the world is the projection of responsibility as if it involves people, places, things, partners, families, jobs, careers, citizens. Maybe you feel you haven't been the best citizen. You could have been in your country. You could have been a better citizen. It doesn't matter. The world is the projection of responsibility to an external world that was made up by the ego to keep you guilty. So that's why you feel you haven't been good enough. I haven't been a good enough mother or a good enough father. I haven't been a good enough brother or sister. Not a good enough partner. I've not been a good enough neighbor. I'm not a good enough course of miracle student. I'm not a good enough course of miracles teacher. If it goes on and on and on, it's the projection of the mind's responsibility to accept the correction from the Holy Spirit onto the world in a make-believe fictitious world that God didn't create. And actually, God doesn't even know about. But the Holy Spirit sees the world in a new way of pure innocence. He knows that everyone's innocent because spirit is real and bodies are not. So we can't think that we're going to be happy if we keep trying to project our guilt onto the bodies and we use the world as like a dumping, dumping ground.  It's like, Jesus is saying, give it a break. The world's not your problem. It's, it's in your mind. That's where the problem is. It's not the politicians. It's not the nuclear weapons. It's not the pandemic.  No, it's in the mind. It's always in the mind. So our third, basically third theme here we have is true charity, seeing God in all my brothers. So basically true charity is, is very much like, I'll call it like true empathy. When you come inside and you get in touch with what's real and true within you, then you can extend that truth to everything and everyone, right? It's, it's your mind. If you have the light in it, why not be a bringer of light? You know, instead of trying to play small and, and hide, why not be a bringer of light? Wherever you go, why not be a bringer of happiness and joy? Let people feel the peace in your heart when you interact with them. And part of being able to do this consistently, of course, is undoing the ego and undoing the self-concept. Jesus says, whenever you feel the need to become defensive about anything, you have identified yourself with an illusion, you see? So if you are identified with the body, of course, you're going to feel helpless at times. You'll feel weak at times. You'll feel like you're not good enough if you're identified with the body. But the more you start to come back into your mind and you start to realize, oh, I have a powerful mind. My mind is actually part of God's mind, and that mind is very beautiful. It's just filled with light. It's not, doesn't have any darkness in it, in its holy state. But when I'm asleep and dreaming, then I have these strange, things floating through my mind, and they're called attack thoughts. That's why we call it a split mind. You might say that the sleeping mind is schizophrenic. It's believing in the split. It's believing in the separation. It's hearing multiple voices. We call them humans, but actually it's multiple voices. They don't agree. They never agree with each other. All these multiple voices, the committee in our mind, like in the movie Violet. And finally, remembering to go towards those given me by the spirit. That's something that Francis and I talked a little bit about on Friday, and you could see and hear that last night. Wasn't that a great session with Jessica and Nicholas and Linda? Wasn't that fantastic? Weren't they so transparent? They were so transparent about following their heart, facing their resistances, facing their challenges. And I would say, they gave a pretty good insight into not only do they have to really be transparent in their daily life, living in a house with six people total. If you're going to be consistently open-hearted, then you really have to be very transparent and very willing to expose private thoughts and not to please other people if you're going to maintain your happiness in a house where you have six people and a cat. We saw Iso got in on the game yesterday too. He loves the spotlight. So he actually took Linda's chair at one point. He was trying to replace her on the panel. But what we find is that this transparency, and I think Linda talked about it a little bit with her friends and family. And Nicholas talked about it with different relationships he had, and Jessica talked about it with her mother, with her children, with her partner, with her sister. And I think, again, when we talk about practicing a course in miracles and going all the way with the course, which is that's why I think you're here with me today, you want to go all the way with it. You're not going for 75%. With this healing, you want to go 100% and take 100% responsibility for your state of mind. But for most people, the stickiest area and the most challenging area is relationships. We'll call them interpersonal relationships with family and spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends. That rings the bell as the most difficult.  I'm indifferent with most people in the world, but I get stuck in my practice with the course of miracles with partners and families and close friends. Now, it must be that there's some kind of trick going on if we feel that much intense emotion when we even think of these people, even when we're thinking of them, whether they're physically present or not, there's a lot of intensity there. And I would say that I needed to give you a little bit of metaphysics to remind you of the metaphysics of the course, because those metaphysics are extremely important if you're going to give your whole heart to practicing forgiveness.  They've been suppressed. So we're dealing with a lot of emotional suppression and repression here. That's why they're not in your mind constantly. And where are these intense, dark emotions coming from? They're coming from the unconscious mind. Now, unconscious means you're not aware of it. So if there's a darkness in your sleeping mind that you're not aware of, it is the unconscious mind. And Jesus says it's very dark. It's so dark that he calls it the dream that you dream in secret.   And you're trying to be happy on the surface. But you've got a lot of darkness, a lot of cobwebs and dust and darkness in that basement. And you have got to go into the basement if you're going to work with Jesus and escape from this dream entirely. I adopted a cat years ago. It was a little three-legged kitten. And I called her tripod. And in the same house that I was living in since 25 years ago, we have a basement here. And this house was built in 1847. This house was built before the Civil War in the United States. It's an old house, not in terms of Europe. But I mean, some of you in Europe are going, ah, that's not old at all. That's young. That's kids games. But we're not talking Middle East or Mesopotamia. We're talking United States, 1847. And my little three-legged cat always wanted to go in the basement.  I opened the door. I let her go. And like two hours later, she came out. She looked like Darth Vader. There were cobwebs that were so old in this basement that she was wearing her Darth Vader Halloween costume when she came out.  She was covered in black cobwebs. She looked like Darth Vader. And people don't like to even think that they have an unconscious mind. They just like to think that something in the world is tripping them. So they'll say, I'm having a bad day. This happened to me, David. This and this and this. I'm like, you know, it's just the unconscious mind peeking up into the surface of consciousness. It's not about the weather. It's not about what somebody said to you, what somebody did.  They have nothing to do with the upset. Lesson number five, I'm never upset for the reason I think, yeah, it's the unconscious mind is where the upset is. So in relationships, we start to feel safe enough. Sometimes in certain relationships, we start to feel safe enough. And then we get close, we feel more connection, more love. We feel closer than ever, safer than ever. And then lo and behold, up comes the ego from the unconscious like a volcano. It just erupts out of nowhere, seemingly, but it's coming from the unconscious. And it's very shocking for all of us. None of us like it. It's traumatic. It's traumatic is what I'll say. But what is the context for all of this? And I'll say that when the mind believed in separation from God, which of course is just a belief, because you can't actually separate from your Creator, that's impossibility. But with the belief in separation from God, it was such a horrific feeling. Jesus calls the unholy instant, the time of terror, he calls it. It was so horrific that it was pushed out of awareness. But when the mind pushed the unconscious out of awareness, it also pushed the light out of awareness because deeper than the unconscious mind is the light of heaven. So we're talking a case of double jeopardy here. Pushing the darkness into the unconscious also pushed the light further, which is underneath the unconscious. So now what we consider the human race and what we consider our interpersonal relationships, those are way off on the surface of the mind. And they are just projections of what's going on in the mind. How do we get past this? Well, well, I called it double jeopardy because it's pushing the light and the darkness out of awareness. I will also call it double oblivion because the light is who we are. That's how God created us as the Christ, His perfect spirit. But the darkness that's overlaying that that's covering over our light is making the light oblivious to us. And we're oblivious about this intense darkness. We couldn't even function during the day if we were fully aware of this unconscious. It would be so horrific and so frightening that it would just be Freddie Krueger 24-7. It would be the nightmare of time and space. And the reason we experience nightmares from time to time is because these unconscious dark thoughts come up from time to time. And we have nightmares, we have cold sweats, we have night terrors. But we're dealing with double oblivion. So the projected world when people say, I don't like society and I don't like the world, I don't like all the laws and rules of this world. And I don't like how I have to do certain things all the time. I don't like having to conform. Those are all projections too. There's only one law and that's the law of love. That's what we were created as is love. So really, let's keep it honest here. We're dealing really with one law from God, which is the law of love. That's what we were created in. And now all these other laws are make believe laws of time and space that the ego has made up, laws of medicine, laws of economics, laws of disease, laws of hierarchies and striving, ranking. It's a world of competition. It's a world of scarcity and lack. It's a world of changes. It's a world of extremes. It's a world God did not create because there's only the law of love. But that's the light. And it's pushed out of awareness and it's covered over by this unconscious darkness. So today's movie is going to give us a good opportunity to follow along with the characters. And I'll give you lots of good commentary. So you can stay on the magic carpet ride with me. And again, this is one of those movies that's not maybe as visually intense as the matrix visually as intense as the island. But with the matrix, there was a projected computer generated world in the island. There was a make believe world of memory. It's using memory in a distorted way, both in the island and the matrix. So that there's a lie. There's a secret that's underneath the projected world.  It's the ego. The ego made this projected world. That's the secret. That's the lie that's underneath it. Now, I know in this world, a lot of times people will call to me, write to me, and they're always asking me about conspiracies, all these conspiracies. But really there aren't multiple conspiracies. It's just the belief in the ego is a conspiracy against your true identity. That's a conspiracy. If you want to know about a conspiracy, believing in the ego is a misplacement of identity. It's attempting to substitute fear for divine love. Talk about a conspiracy. That's a major attempt to put fear in the place of love. It's enormous. It's not a minor thing. It's an enormous attempt at substituting fear for love. Now, the way that the ego deals with trying to protect itself from the Holy Spirit and from the Jesus and the light is this projected world. It's hiding in the unconscious mind and it's using a projected world which seems to be happening to you as a person that's being generated from the unconscious mind. So it's very much like the matrix. It's like a generated false world that's just projected from the mind. Now, projection. We've already talked about denial and repression. Let me talk a little bit about projection because I think those are the two major defenses against the light. Denial and projection. I've already covered denial in great detail. Projection is the attempt to get rid of something you don't want by seeing it somewhere else. So it's like looking into a kaleidoscope and saying, oh, I don't want to feel bad, but oh, look at that. Oh, I don't like it. Look at the red in there. Ooh, purple. Green, yellow. It's seeing the anger, the envy, the jealousy in the world of form as if people are angry, as if people are envious and jealous. You see, it's a big trick to trying to see in the world what you don't want to face in your mind. It's quite an ingenious trick. And yet this world is the result of projection. So I can say also, projection doesn't work. When you try to see something that you don't want in your mind as if it's in the world, then you're keeping it in your mind. That's a way to keep it. You're not forgiving it and releasing it. You're seeing it as if it's outside of you. And there is nothing outside. I can tell you right now, that's the ultimate realization of spiritual awakening, is that there's nothing outside of you. You're it. You're the whole. You're the whole. And there's nothing outside of the whole. But projection is an attempt to blame, to see it as external. So I thought I would read to you just a little bit about projection from Jesus in A Course in Miracles, just so you're saturated with this idea before the movie of of how the world we seem to see isn't what it seems to be. It's a trick of trying to see outside what is inside. Just like last night when Jessica was talking about, you know, her mother and she was saying, you know, I'm going to ask you one question and you cannot answer no or we're done. And are you going to be at my funeral? But that was a projection of a fearful thought. And then it's answered by joining by really connecting with somebody and realizing we're the same one. I'm not going to blame you for something that I have believed in. I'm going to release what I believed in so we can remember our homeless, remember that we're connected. We're the same one. We're not different at all. So here's what Jesus has to say. This is from chapter six. What you project, you disown and therefore do not believe is yours. You are excluding yourself by the very judgment that you are different from the one on whom you project. Since you have also judged against what you project, you continue to attack it because you continue to keep it separated. By doing this unconsciously, you try to keep the fact that you attacked yourself out of awareness. And thus imagine that you have made yourself safe. Wow. I'm going to read that last sentence again because this is describing why the unconscious mind was made. In other words, it was made to try to feel safe. A horrific feeling. Oh, let's just forget that. Let's push it out of awareness. I don't even want to deal with this feeling of separation from God. Push it out of awareness. By doing this unconsciously, you try to keep the fact that you attacked yourself out of awareness and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe. So the unconscious mind has been pushed out of awareness and the light has been pushed out of awareness in a defensive maneuver for the sleeping mind to try to be safe. I sometimes want people to say, can you say that in another way? It's like they say in Italy, forget about it. Forget about it. Forget about that separation. I'm not interested in that separation. Well, separation from God is no small belief. If you talk about a crazy belief, that's the most insane belief and it's forget about it. Push it out of awareness. And then when you project the world, it seems like the world's attacking you. It seems like people are attacking you. It seems like the weather is attacking you sometimes, a rainstorm or a tsunami. But that's all just a projection of the belief that you could attack yourself. What does that even mean? Well, if you believe you're separate from God, that has got to be the big attack thought. Underneath all grievances and judgments, there's one that is underneath. It's unconscious, but it's the belief that you have attacked yourself and attacked God. That is not an awareness. Jesus does, he hinted that for the first time in lesson number 13 of the workbook, where he says, a meaningless world engenders fear. That's what lesson number 13 is. And then if you read down, once you go down some paragraphs toward the bottom of the lesson, he brings in his first cause and effect, true cause and effect idea of the workbook, where he's saying, a meaningless world engenders fear because I think I'm in competition with God. He drops the atomic bomb already in lesson number 13. You see, he's bringing together a meaningless world engenders fear. He's bringing up the emotion of fear and he's saying, because I believe I am in competition with God. What does that mean? I believe I have an ego and God didn't create the ego. I believe I'm in a world of time and space and God didn't create time and space. I believe I'm separate from God and I'm not. I'm really one with God. You see, that's a big, that's a horrific, so you see it's hidden, it's pushed out of awareness. Now, he says a little bit further, he goes on the next paragraph, yet projection will always hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind and its only purpose is to keep you to keep the separation going. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel different from your brothers and separated from them. The ego justifies this on the grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring your equality with them still further. Projection and attack are inevitably related because projection is always a means of justifying attack. Anger without projection is impossible.  The process begins by excluding something that exists in you but which you do not want and leads directly to excluding you from your brothers. So the world is a trick as if there's something external that you don't like, but the reason it seems external is because the mind projected it that way, so it's tricking itself. First, you believe in the ego, which is to believe you can attack yourself and then you project a world that the ego projects and basically it seems as if the attack is external. And how could you ever feel safe if the world is constantly seeming to attack you?  Oh, what happened? Somebody broke into my house. Somebody, I was out today. First somebody started yelling at me and then they hit me. They hit me. You see, that's pretty strong evidence of attack and certainly bodies can seem to attack other bodies. We're not saying that that isn't the perception. We're saying that that's a projection of the ego, the whole world. Now today's movie is going to help because this movie, like a lot of other movies in our movie watchers guide to enlightenment is a generated world in which something horrific has happened in the past. We don't know exactly fully what it is, but we know something bad happened. Like in The Matrix, we finally found out that Morpheus tells us that the machines turned against the humans and then the humans retaliated against the machines and you got a war between the machines and the humans. In this movie, something happened that was very traumatic. We know it comes from the unconscious mind. And then the world was, the society was reformulated to guard against those traumatic feelings, to guard against those traumatic emotions. Sound familiar? Am I talking about the movie society or earth? It's the same. That's why the movie is so helpful. So the world, the society was made to bring a sense of order where there is chaos, unconscious mind is chaos. That's why we have judges. That's why we have traffic lights. We have rules, societal rules, we have laws that are part of countries. We have things that people are telling me now they're very upset with. Sometimes people are saying, David, in our country now we're having vaccine mandates. Like it's the worst thing they've ever encountered in the history of the human race is a law mandating a vaccine. And I'm like, well, it's just another ego projection of fear. It's in the mind. It's not the governments aren't doing this. Their people aren't doing this is a projection of fear. So in this movie, there's a society and they try to bring about a sense of harmony through organization and structure and rules. Okay. So this society has a lot of organization structure and rules. You're not going to see a lot of sexual activity in this society because there's proximity warnings. They're not even, this society's got so much control. They're not even going to let the bodies come together to touch. You've got to be very careful just to come and touch, much less sexual activity. They're very controlling in this society about words. They have very specific definitions of certain words and they don't want to trigger any kind of deep emotions. So they keep a very limited communication, which is that the words are very defined. This is the opposite of Socrates. This is the opposite of Plato who were into open discussion. Everybody can ask anything. You can bring up anything like my gatherings. Bring up anything. No topic is off limit. Bring it up. There's no taboo topics. I'll talk to anybody about anything at all. I don't care. But in this society, in the movie, there's a control over the words. So it's called precision of language. Imagine you're having a discussion with somebody and you use a word and somebody goes, precision of language. You've used the word. You've used the word that we don't use. I think that there's part of that in our society where we say don't use certain words because they're offensive. But nowadays with the internet, I don't know. People seem to be using every word that there is. Nobody seems to care about what words they use. But not in this society in the movie. There's some structure around language and communication. So the other thing is they seem to have procedures of dealing with children, babies, and they seem to have procedures that are dealing with the elderly. So the whole reason that this society in this movie was built was because there were some deep emotions that were so destructive and so chaotic that a world of control was made up a society, a community. A community of control was made up to minimize the threat of these deeper emotions. So basically this is a constructed community and world that was designed to give a structure, an organized harmony. This is about organized harmony. Only problem is harmony, harmony from God, harmony from Jesus, can't be organized. It's just, it's what is. It's actually just a fact. Harmony is a fact. It doesn't need rules to maintain it. It just is. It is what it is. When you know it as it is, you know, oh my gosh, everything's harmonious. It was created to be harmonious. So basically what we find is that there are emotions that have been pushed out of awareness and I would say at the beginning of this movie, did anybody ever see the movie Pleasantville? Did you ever see Pleasantville? You know, where it's all kind of black and white and then the colors start coming through and the passions start to come back. This one, this movie is like that. It's going to start out black and white because the deeper passionate emotions have been projected, I would say repressed and covered over by, they use injections in this movie. I think this movie was made a lot of years ago. I don't know, quite a few years ago, but it's they use injections, vaccines. They use vaccines to keep emotions suppressed. And basically the only thing I'll say about that is there's a part in the course workbook, workbook lesson 135, where Jesus is telling us about this connection and this harmony. And he's basically saying we can experience this consistently, this harmony, except for three things. These are the three things that Jesus tells us not to do. And don't you love it when Jesus gives you three things not to do? Because he usually knows, he definitely knows what he's talking about. This is the way show we're telling us. This isn't, this isn't like a theory. And Jesus says, you can really stay in the connection, stay in the unity. If you don't do any of these three things, he said, don't don't activate the past. Don't organize the present. And don't plan the future. Isn't that beautiful? The way show or just gives us three things. It's real simple, three things. All you have to do is don't activate the past, organize the present or plan the future. Now, in this movie, these people definitely are trying to avoid the past in a big way, but they still believe in it. They're still activating the past with all their rules. They've got a lot of rules. And they are doing it by organizing the present. They are taking the society, the family structure, the communication, and they're coming up with roles so that the society can function as a harmonious way. Does that sound a little bit like our world? Father, mother, sister, brother, and all the occupations, the roles. That's what Jessica was talking about last night, right? And Nicholas a bit. And then certainly Linda was talking about it. She was talking about with her family, friends, her father. It's the roles that are the ego's attempt to organize the present. When you become completely present, when you come into the I am presence of who you really are, guess what's gone? The roles. I always laugh, even with religions, I always laugh because some religions I've seen when I've traveled around the world, they don't want to offend men or women. So when they talk about God, they talk about father, mother, God, but they're just projecting duality onto God, you see? Because father is a role and mother is a role and sister, brother, they're all roles. And all the roles of this world are projected by the ego. And they're all used to organize the present. They're used to organize society. How could you have a society without roles? And what if none of them are true? What if maybe Jesus is saying, if you want a role, here I'll give you one, miracle worker. Try that one on. Teacher of God, try that one on. You see, he's going to throw something in that's a little more expansive than the other roles. Also in this movie, the main character is going to be so helpful for all of us because he's going to come upon a ritual where the main chief elder of the community is going to hand out the roles, the current roles. And she's going to pass out everybody's roles. And he's going to get a very rare and unusual role. And I think that's beautiful because he's going to be called a receiver, the first receiver of memories. He's going to be given the role of receiving the memories of the whole community, what's underneath this whole community, this whole society. And he's going to be given an apprentice played by Jeff Bridges, who also was a first receiver. He also had that role. And we are told there's another woman played by Taylor Swift, the singer-songwriter Rosemary. And she had been the first receiver too. So this is almost like the society psychic, the society intuitive, who is starting to receive some of the memories and the intense emotions that the whole society has been designed not to experience. And we all know, we know people in this world that seem to feel a lot. And they have a broader expanse of, we might say, perception, because they have more of a full range of emotions. They're not so repressed. They're not so much into denial. They're more open because they have more of a broader picture of all the emotions. And then the chief elder of the community is played by Meryl Streep. Some of you were with me recently, several weeks ago, when I showed the movie Don't Look Up, which is very popular now. And Meryl Streep played the president of the United States in that movie. But in this movie, she's playing the chief elder. And she's definitely got some secrets. It's really not a good thing when the chief of your tribe or the president of your country is not in the line with truth or spirit. It's really a projection of chaos and havoc. And she does her best to try to keep control over the society. But in the end, this is just showing that in the end, we have to take full responsibility for our state of mind. We can't look to politicians. We can't look to political leaders. We can't look to the United Nations. We can't look to the world as a source of our peace of mind. Our peace of mind has to come from our intuition within. And this is what the inward journey to healing is about, starting to go fully to your intuition to be guided and instructed, and letting go of the belief in external rules and regulations. Jesus is not telling us to just completely ignore the ego's rules. He was a good example when he came to earth 2000 years ago, and the Jews had a rule like you can't go into the temple to pray unless you pay the temple tax before you go into the temple. So when Jesus and the apostles, when they went to go into the temple, they paid the temple tax. They paid the tax. You see, that's important because Jesus told us render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar, and unto God, that which is God. Jesus is taking us back inside toward the one law, the law of love. But he's not telling us to overtly try to rebel against and overthrow the laws of the land. He's teaching us how to transcend the whole world through love. He's teaching us that if we identify with who we really are, we are under no laws but God's. That's lesson number 50 of the workbook. I am sustained by the love of God. He's teaching us that when we follow our intuition, when we follow the Holy Spirit, everything will be taken care of without rebelling against the ego, without rebelling against the world, but using inner guidance to transcend this world and to come to expand your perception from a limited ego perception to the Holy Spirit's holistic perception of the world. That's what spiritual awakening is all about. It's about allowing the Holy Spirit to expand your perception. Sometimes people will say, the Course teaches that the body only has one function for the Holy Spirit and that is communication. The sole function of the body is for communication for the Holy Spirit, not for competition, not for comparison, not for striving and achieving, not for gaining material possessions. Nope, that's not what the body's for. It's only for communication. And then there's one part in the Course of Miracles where Jesus says that the body can be used to expand your perception. Oh, isn't that lovely? Now we're really starting to see, oh, that's what the body's for, to expand my perception. What does he mean, expand my perception? He's wanting us to see the big picture.  The Holy Spirit sees the body as completely neutral. The Holy Spirit sees all events and encounters and situations as completely neutral. Why? Because the Holy Spirit does not judge anything of this world positively or negatively because the Holy Spirit knows it's not real. Why would you judge something positive or negative if it doesn't even exist? And the Holy Spirit knows that this world is false, completely false. So the problem of judgment is the ego trying to read meaning onto the movie. Like we watch a movie on television, for example, and the only time you get upset with the movie is the meaning that you've read onto the scenes. It's not the movie that's upsetting. It's the split mind that keeps projecting meaning, false meaning onto the world. That's what's upsetting. So also this movie is about open communication and transparency. And our main character, his name is Jonas and Jonas has two friends and his friends are a girl named Fiona and a boy named Escher. So this is really a movie of three friends who seem to be dealing with there must be more to life than what we're perceiving. And if you talk to children or especially if you talk to any teenager, if you would interview a teenager and you would say, what is frustrating to you about Earth and about planet Earth and its difficulties, they would say, I hope there's more. There's got to be more than this. They would tell you. And these are three teenagers coming of age who, you know, Jonas and Escher and Fiona, they're coming of age, they're good friends and they're dealing with their family issues and their societal issues and what they're calling is in life. They're trying to find out what they're calling is. So Meryl Streep, the chief kind of of the tribe, she's going to give them roles to help them fulfill their roles. But our main character, he, I think the more that he goes into his given role, which is a receiver of memories, he starts to have his heart activated. And I think that's what happens when we study the course. When we really study the course, all of a sudden our heart starts to get activated. I mean, passionate. We start to get really activated like, Oh, there's more than this personality self. There's more than this society. There's more than this limited country or culture that I seem to be dealing with. There's much, much, much more in awareness than what the mind perceives when it believes in the ego. The ego is like blinders. So when you believe in the ego, you're just perceiving a small a small fragment of perception. That seems to be a private little world. And it's a private perspective on the world that has nothing to do with reality whatsoever. It's like you're in your own perceptual jail, your perceptual prison. And when you offer your opinion, you're saying, here's my tiny little opinion. And, and the angels are all laughing. They're like, oh, oh my God, another opinion. Oh my God, the angels, they're just like, Oh my God, so many opinions. No truth, but so many opinions. And yet we're going to watch Jonas go on a journey where he starts to get activated. And his tutor is the receiver of memories who will reveal himself as the giver. That's what we want. We want in this world to encounter a giver. If you ever encounter a true giver, you stay locked in on that giver. That's your gateway back to remembering heaven. Because a giver is God only gives God is the ultimate giver. God is the giver of love. God is the giver of light. God is the giver of wisdom. God is the giver of strength. And the man in this one, the giver is played by Jeff Bridges. And he is going to have an apprentice, which is going to be our main character, Jonas. And also we find out he had another apprentice named Rosemary. But it was extremely intense for Rosemary to receive these memories. It would be intense for any of us to start to take on all the memories of history. That would be kind of overwhelming if you had to take on all the memories of history. And yet it's for the purpose of spiritual awakening. The Holy Spirit is going to be very selective and pick miracles for us so that we can come to a holistic perception of the world. That's how the Holy Spirit works. The Holy Spirit always helps us to see the world in an expansive way. It's expanded perception. It's not little tunnel vision. It's expanded perception. So that's how the Holy Spirit expands our perception. It's through communication. That's why our community lives by the guidelines, no people pleasing and no private thoughts, because those two guidelines were given to me from Jesus to help us learn to trust, to expand our faith, to learn to be transparent, to learn to be open, and eventually to be open-minded, which is a state of non-judgment.  When your mind is open, it doesn't judge anything. It doesn't even know what it means to judge. But when your mind is closed and asleep, then it's addicted to judging.  Just judge, judge, judge, ticker, ticker, ticker, like a little stock ticker tape going on in there. So that's what the Holy Spirit's job is, is to lift us through guidance to a state of mind that's so pristine that there's no judgment whatsoever, not a speck of judgment. That's why Jesus said, judge not, lest you be judged. He was saying, if you don't judge, you'll know that you're the Christ. But if you judge, you'll sleep, and you'll forget that you're the Christ, and you'll experience much to do about nothing. That's what Shakespeare called it. If you judge, you have to take on the much to do about nothing world. So that's my little introduction for the day. I now introduce the movie, The Giver, on this Holy Relationship Weekend. What do I have to say about The Giver? Absolute mente spectacular. It is, it is exquisite. This is, you are in for a fine experience today, because this movie will boom, boom to your heart. Your heart will explode open, especially at the end. That's what it's designed to do. So let's enjoy the movie together, and I will come in from time to time to give you some happy ideas along the way. And remember, this community in this movie, this society or community, this is representing the world that we have perceived. It's going to show us some insights about a different version of the world that we have perceived. Where this world is what some people would call more of an attempt at utopia, where there's rules and guidelines to make people behave. We know how that goes. We can see in our world, not so good. And in this world too, it's only, you know, it's a trick, so it can't last very long. So enjoy the movie and have a wonderful time, and I will see you very shortly. Beautiful. Hearts and hearts. Lots of


Hi, my name is Kevin Stofen and I'm an instructor for our geospatial intelligence program. I first got into GIS in 1998. That's when I took my first GIS course and I've been hooked ever since and used it in a wide range of problems. I'm actually coming up on my 20th anniversary of using GIS and it's been great because I've been able to use it for such a wide range of problems including environmental sciences, archaeology, and even in the military. I think GIS is going to continue to be an important tool mainly because GIS professionals bring such a unique perspective on spatial data and space tends to be a common domain in so many problem sets. When I'm not teaching courses for Penn State, I work for a fast-paced startup that looks at data science and machine learning problems and I've even been able to use GIS in that context also. I'll leave you with a fun fact about myself. When I'm not busy working for a fast-paced startup or teaching courses for Penn State, I spend quite a bit of time coaching baseball for my son's baseball team.