experience the light directly, the light of truth, of love, of innocence, and clear away all thoughts and all shadows, all judgments in perception. And that's how we reach the light, we reach the light by clearing our minds with the Holy Spirit's help, just bringing the darkness to the light and letting it dissolve, letting it just be carried away, and the light is all that remains. So let's go to our lesson today, lesson 21. I am determined to see things differently. The idea for today is obviously a continuation and extension of the preceding one. This time, however, specific mind-searching periods are necessary in addition to applying the idea to particular situations as they may arise. Five practice periods are urged, allowing a full minute for each. So he is emphasizing in some of these lessons, he's calling it mind-searching, specific mind-searching periods. And we're typically used to thinking of our body as moving through time and space and facing one situation after the next after the next. Now he's trying to say, well, even if you can think of situations, regardless of your body is seeming to move through them and experience them, in this day, he says, if you're thinking of situations, you know, they could be from the past, they could be from the future, they could be past memories or future goals and ambitions and visualizations of the body or the person gaining something that it seems to want in the future. Basically, we're expanding now to specific mind-searching periods that basically are for particular situations and for memories and projections of the future. In the practice periods, begin by repeating the idea to yourself, then close your eyes and search your mind carefully for situations past, present, or anticipated that arouse anger in you. The anger may take the form of any reaction ranging from mild irritation to rage. The degree of the emotion you experience does not matter.  Try therefore not to let the little thoughts of anger escape you in the practice periods. Remember that you do not really recognize what arouses anger in you. Nothing that you believe in this connection means anything. That's why we went through Lessons 5, 6, 7, 8. I'm never upset for this reason, I think. I'm upset because I see something that's not there, I see only the past, my mind is preoccupied with past thoughts. You see, he's got to reverse the thinking of the world, of the belief that external circumstances and situations, actions, are causative and that they are determining the upset in the mind. It's not so.  You will probably be tempted to dwell more on some situations or persons than on others, on the felitious grounds that they are more obvious. This is not so. It is merely an example of the belief that some forms of attack are more justified than others. Okay, there's a lot in this lesson. Okay, there's no small upsets. There's a difference between anger, rage, irritation, annoyance. There are no differences. Basically, he told us that the slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury and then now we're starting to realize that we don't really, really understand the source of the anger because if we did it, the anger would be God. If you really could see the ego for what it is, it wouldn't be there to experience because you wouldn't believe it. He would say this belief in separation is, separation from God is unbelievable. It's ridiculous. It's unfathomable. That's what we have to come to when we come to healing. We have to really expose the belief that's there in the mind and then we don't get caught up in different forms of nothingness, trying to compare them or say some forms of nothingness are worse than others or some forms of nothingness feel better or worse than others do. No, that's not so. So he closed that section by saying it is merely an example of the belief that some forms of attack are more justified than others. That's the belief. As you suit your mind for all the forms in which attack thoughts present themselves, hold each one in mind while you tell yourself, I am determined to see the name of a person differently. I am determined to see specified situation differently. Try to be as specific as possible.  If your perception is suffering from this form of distortion, say, I am determined to see and specify the attribute and specify the name of the person differently. So I'm determined to see gullibility in a person differently or I am determined to see weakness in a specific person differently. I am determined to see incompetence in a specific person differently. You can see that it's all coming down to practice that what we're being shown clearly, clearly, clearly is that if you're seeing a fragmented world, you have a perceptual problem and the perceptual problem is from a belief in the mind and thoughts that spring from that belief. The belief in the mind that is, we'll say the source of error is the ego and the attack thoughts that it sponsors, then those are what is used to produce a fragmented world, a world of competition and division and war. It's an ego belief underneath and then there are attack thoughts and clearly as we go and we pray to learn how to forgive, as Jesus really is teaching us to forgive, we clearly have to begin to take a look at what's going on and what seems to be going on in our sleeping mind. What are the seeming dynamics of the ego and the more we take a look at it, the more we become more and more convinced by the Holy Spirit and Jesus that this belief is incredible. It is unbelievable and then when we get more and more deeper into the mind and we're willing to expose it and see it's nothingness, then we're free. Our mind is home free. So you can see that's the direction of healing. So today in order to support our work with this beautiful lesson, again the lesson is I am determined to see things differently. Let's jump to chapter 11 and then jump down to section 7 and go all the way here to paragraph 4. The perception of goodness is not knowledge or not heaven, but the denial of the opposite of goodness enables you to recognize a condition in which opposites do not exist. And this is the condition of knowledge. So we're here to deny the opposite of goodness and thus recognize a condition in which opposites do not exist. Without this awareness you have not met its conditions and until you do you will not know it is yours already. You have made many ideas that you have placed between yourself and your Creator and these beliefs are the world as you perceive it. Truth is not absent here, but it is obscure. You do not know the difference between what you have made and what God created and so you do not know the difference between what you have made and what you have created. To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can know yourself. You can know God because it is his will to be known. The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you out of what you have made and to perceive only this is salvation because this is the recognition that reality is only what is true. It's how beautiful. It's just, you know, it's a lesson in the simple and the obvious. The truth is true and only the truth is true. Spirit is true and images of time and space are untrue. This is the one distinction that must be made in forgiveness. That's why forgiveness simply sees the false as false. How gloriously simple it is, but this simplicity is a purpose of the Holy Spirit, of Jesus in the mind and it is not in the specific forms because there really are no specific forms. Fragmented perception, seeing the pieces and the parts is the problem. So you don't find the solution inside of the pieces and the parts. You have to go back into your mind and see that you need a new purpose, a new way of looking at the world where there was once an egoic purpose of hatred, guilt, fear, shame, pain then it has been replaced by the Holy Spirit's purpose of forgiveness and that's what we're embracing. So the workbook lessons are really transferring the training and learning to practice holding onto that purpose with everyone, everything, every situation, every conceivable situation, every concept you can think of. The only concept that actually is helpful that you might say takes you beyond time and space is the concept of forgiveness because in heaven is pure oneness, love, eternity, there is no need to forgive in eternity but for a mind that's asleep and believing in illusions, forgiveness is required. It's essential and that's what we're really looking at today. You want a simple life, well simplicity starts with guidance, internal guidance. A lot of times people have different forms come to mind of a simple life. We know that that can be a step in the right direction. When Henry David Thoreau, back up in Massachusetts, went to Walden Pond, he was looking for truth, trying to find the sublime truth but he also intuitively felt it would be simple and I think a lot of us have felt like if there is truth, we're pondering the idea that it must be very simple and obvious. When we believe in an external world of fragments and pieces, then we tend to even put our ideas about simplicity and simple onto the form. We tend to try to define a simple life as if simplicity would look a certain way. These are stepping stones. I think anyone who's joining in here today who feels their life is way, way too complex then I think you do have to just open to the guidance and the guidance will tell you that too.  Complexity is of the ego. You need to start to expose and release this ego belief system because it's very complex. If you seem to have a complex life in form, it's just a projection of the wish to be an ego and to be identified with the ego. So as you go much, much, much deeper in mind training, you start to realize that the purpose of the Holy Spirit is the simplicity. Right-mindedness, Jesus calls it, that's where simplicity is. He says right-minded seeing can see only perfection. Wow. That's simple. If you're perceiving perception in a way that you feel the perfect divine flow of all things working together for good, of nothing being out of place, nothing being a mess, that's a very, very high state of mind. That's exactly what we're aiming for. So when we're saying I am determined to see things differently, really what we're saying is I'm determined to join and merge with the Holy Spirit's perspective of the world. I want to see how Jesus sees the world. I want to let thy mind be single. Let me have an interpretation of unified awareness. Let me have an interpretation where I make no distinctions between people, places, things, and situations. For years I've said that the problem and ego belief and ego thinking is situational thinking. And if you're thinking in terms of situations, then that is the problem. And basically that is the common accepted assumption for the human condition and the person that the person will seem to have to face many different situations. And yet the mind can realize that all the situations are the same. Nothing I see means anything. They're all identical. Because why? Because they're equally illusions. The illusory world is not really made up of pieces. It's just one tapestry of nothingness, as Shakespeare said much ado about nothing. So let's marinate in that blissful thought and let's maybe turn, go forward again to chapter 26, the transition. And let's jump to the third section called the borderland. And then let's drop down to paragraph five. Salvation stops just short of heaven, for only perception needs salvation. Heaven was never lost and so cannot be saved. Yet who can make a choice between the wish for heaven and the wish for hell unless he recognizes they are not the same. Okay, let's just call the wish for heaven forgiveness.  Okay, let's keep it simple. And who can make a choice between the wish for heaven forgiveness and the wish for hell fear unless he recognizes they are not the same. This difference is the learning goal this course has set. It will not go beyond its aim. Its only purpose is to teach what is the same and what is different, leaving room to make the only choice that can be made. Okay, this is the aim of the course and its only purpose is to teach what is the same and what is different. And then the mind has to then make the choice when it can see what is the same and what is different. Okay, spoiler alert, I'm going to tell you what the same is and what's different. I know we're only on lesson 21, but let's get at it right now. Who wants to wait? Why wait for heaven? Why wait for happiness? Why wait for joy if you can have it now? What is the same and what is different? What is the same is all of the images of the world. They're all projections. They're equally unreal. They're illusions. They're all the same. The ego projected them all and the ego is a death wish and the ego doesn't know what anything is. It's a belief in separation from God and it projected every single seeming image in the cosmos, the linear time-space cosmos of distorted perception. So all of the images that seem to be separate images that are separated by time and space at different coordinates in time and space. They're all the same. They're all the same. And that is a key thing. And what is different is the two different purposes in the split mind. The ego and the Holy Spirit are different. The ego is a death wish. The Holy Spirit is the comforter, the bridge home, the healer. The Holy Spirit is the voice for God and the ego is the ego believe in separation. So in the split mind, the ego and the Holy Spirit are different. In fact, they have no meeting point. They never meet. They never meet. The Holy Spirit never shakes hands with the ego because how can you shake hands with something that doesn't exist? It's a phantom. It's not real. Belief in separation is not real and the projections of the ego, belief in separation are not real. There are unreal effects of an unreal cause and all these effects are the same. There are different forms of illusions. There are not different forms of nothingness. In the Eastern philosophies they call this world maya. It's not good maya and bad maya. It's not better maya and worse maya. It's not a specific good maya and a specific bad maya. They're all the same. All the effects of error are the same because error is error. It's not real. Sin is an error. It's not real. God is not the creator of sin. God does not create error. God does not create living your time. And when you start to realize what is the same, when you come into forgiveness, ooh, it's quantum. It's quantum. It's simultaneous time. That quantum love song that Kirsten received, you know, there's a great line. It's quantum physics, baby, love radiates, undefined, you know, it's whoa. It's quantum. Because in the moment everything is simultaneous and whatever the dreamer is looking at is seen as false. No need to try to pick and choose between the dream. When you're aware that you're dreaming, that's forgiveness. You just have to have a lucid dream. Why not today? I am determined to see things differently and I'm ready, Holy Spirit, for a lucid dream today. I want to see the world. I want to see a dreamy, peaceful world that I'm aware that is just a dream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. The world is just a dream. The cosmos is just a dream. Let's not take this so serious. I don't care what it is. That's what the lesson's for. Let whatever rises in your mind, whatever you feel, anger, disturbance, annoyance, irritation, doesn't matter what the degree or the direction of the error is. It's false. Just let the false be false. Because why? Because it is false. That's it. So Jesus continues here with the sixth paragraph. There is no basis for a choice in this complex and over-complicated world, for no one understands what is the same and seems to choose where no choice really is. Choosing between situations, choosing between illusions, for no one understands what is the same and seems to choose where no choice really is. The real world is the area of choice made real, not in the outcome, but in the perception of alternatives for choice. That there is choice is an illusion. Yet within this one lies the undoing of every illusion, not accepting this. I've kind of taken down lots of books from Jesus, big ones, small ones, fat ones, skinny ones. One little pamphlet that is really dealing with this section and this talk today that I'm giving is called Purpose is the Only Choice.  You can carry it with you and it's all about coming to the realization that purpose is the only choice. Not trying to go find choices in the world, shopping choices, food choices, drink choices, clothing choices, transportation choices, boyfriend-girlfriend choices, friend choices, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's go back, let's go back. This paragraph is the ultimate of simplicity. There is no basis for a choice in this complex and over-complicated world, for no one understands what is the same and seems to choose where no choice really is. The real world is the area of choice made real, not an outcome, but in the perception of the alternatives for choice. Love or fear, which will I hear? I choose to hear love's voice. It's a matter of choice. That there is choice is an illusion, yet within this one lies the undoing of every illusion not accepting this. It's just talk about fundamentally letting go of everything that you have believed. That's a big one. It's the belief that there's choice in this world. When I'm posting these lives, I look down on YouTube and I see scientists say, scientific proof, there is no free will in this world. It's right, he's right. You could just watch that video and let yourself, let your mind be convinced that there's no free will in this world. Free will is in heaven. God grants us free will and our creation is the Christ. That's free will. But in this world, the will has been in prison and now it's a matrix. It's just the script is written. Where is the choice in the script is written? Where is the choice in destiny? The scientists are now starting to get onto this. Everyone's coming onto it. They're reflecting my mind. That's why I look over on YouTube to see the, oh wow, that's cool too, that scientist is in it. He's reflecting it too. Paragraph seven, we're again, we're in the borderland, chapter 26, the transition, section three, we're on paragraph seven is not this like your special function where the separation is undone by change of purpose in what once was specialness and now is union. All illusions are but one. And in the recognition, this is so lies the ability to give up all attempts to choose between them and to make them different. How simple is the choice between two things so clearly unalike, ego, Holy Spirit, clearly unalike. How simple is the choice between two things so clearly unalike. There is no conflict here, no sacrifices possible in the relinquishment of an illusion recognized as such where all reality has been withdrawn from what was never true. Can it be hard to give it up and choose what must be true? Holy Spirit, atonement, correction, you're not responsible for the error, but you are responsible for accepting the correction of the error. Wow, that sounds pretty simple. I'll say that again. You're not responsible for the error. You're responsible for accepting the correction of the error. But I'm bum. Oh, happy days. Happy days. I hope this is making sense to you because not sense in a physical sense of the five senses, but I hope you're feeling the joy of this. You're off the hook. Your mind is off the hook. And you say, well, I still seem to see a world. No problem. That's not a problem if you're dreaming it. But it's a problem if you think you're a person stuck in it. You need to have a lucid dream. You need to become aware that you're dreaming in order to be happy. And before you wake up from the seeming dream of the world, you have to be consistently aware that you are the dreamer of the dream. I've talked about this in a lot of different ways and shown bunches of movies and come at this many, many, many, many, many, many different ways. But this is the joy that you find when your mind is freed up. This is a borderland of thought where you just have this superficial feeling with everything and you're aware that all the decisions have been made, but you're just kind of watching it. You're watching it in the moment and you're watching the decisions, the seeming decisions that have already been made just kind of drop like dominoes, wouldn't that be a happy day to watch all the decisions? As if they've already been made and it's like dominoes when you tick the first domino. That was a beautiful symbol in the movie Hypnotic or Depends on whether you see it in Mexico or the United States Hypnotic Hypnosis. But yeah, that is a beautiful movie, Ben Affleck. And at the end, when he gets reunited with his daughter who has this symbol of this vast powerful mind and he comes in the meter, he has to follow the dominoes. It's very sweet, very, very sweet. So thank you for joining me today. Just remember your lesson. I am determined to see things differently. Just remember that what is the same cannot be different and what is one cannot have separate parts. What is the same is the sameness of all the images of the world. What is different is the purpose in the mind, the split mind between the Holy Spirit and the ego. And the only purpose of Jesus talking about the mind in terms of right mind, wrong mind and sometimes people get caught up with that. They say, oh, the course is dualistic. No, it's not. It's just he's simplifying choice down to from many, many, many, many choices down to right mind, wrong mind because he wants to make it clear that it's a choice of purpose that is where spiritual awakening comes in. And then once you see the purpose is the only choice that you have, it becomes obvious that the wrong mind is not a real option, because the wrong mind is the ego. And then your right mind, the atonement is the correction, is all that's left because once you bring it down to purpose is the only choice. You're not fooled by the many forms anymore. Then you have to choose the innocence. You have to choose the forgiveness, choose the Holy Spirit's purpose, choose that interpretation of a unified world. And then you see, of course, that the problem was only in your mind. And it's not a real problem unless you believe it, the separation from God. But if you don't believe it, you won't perceive it. You'll see the real world. You'll see the happy dream. You'll see the unified perception, true perception. He calls it in the course. Wee! Exciting. It's exciting. And some of you know that this yesterday was the beginning of the Aquarian period. It's, this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. This is the dawning of realizing that there are no problems apart from the mind. And then why not sing a happy song? Why not have a happy tune inspired by the love of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit and Jesus? Ta-ta-ta. Grab your coat and get your hat. Leave your worries on the doorstep. You know, leave your guilt on the doorstep. And shame and pain on the doorstep. Just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street. Hint to here. The pitter-hat and that happiness is your step. Life can be so sweet on the sunny side of the street, in the sunny side of the mind, which is the right mind. That's where the light is. This is it. It's simple. It's simple. God bless you. I hope you enjoy my singing as much as I do. Bye-bye.


I have spoken before about how lucky we are to be able to meet like this each year. All of our headteachers, alongside our partners within education, meeting under one roof, sharing and communicating news, views and best practice, few other countries have this advantage. For our collaborative reforms to be a success, then communication will be key. And on that theme of communication, trivia buffs amongst you may know that today not only marks the anniversary of the day Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone, but also when the first ever transatlantic telephone call took place. Now whilst today's conference may not make the history books in quite the same way, it really is a fantastic opportunity. Of course this conference is not only your only opportunity to speak to us. Over the coming years, your feedback will be more important than ever and needless to say, we will be asking for your feedback throughout the rollout of our new curriculum. I consider myself and I hope you do too, a Minister who is keen to listen and appreciate the different viewpoints. As you will know last summer I took time to reflect on conversations with teachers, parents and educators throughout the system regarding the implementation of the new curriculum. The consensus was that by rolling out the curriculum with care and collaboration, this will provide the right amount of preparation time for schools and teachers. But let me be clear, that's not time to stand still, but time to provide feedback, further engage with the new curriculum and be fully prepared for the new approach. So the new curriculum and assessment arrangements will be available for schools to feed back, test and refine in Easter 2019. Following that period all schools will have access to the final curriculum from 2020 allowing them to get ready and prepared for statutory rollout in September 2022. So I want to be clear. We, I, need to hear from you over these next two days and also in the months and years ahead. We've moved on a lot since that first telephone call across the Atlantic. That call linked two countries that are over 3,000 miles apart, within Wales being a small country, just imagine what we can achieve by working closely together. We need to use our size as our advantage. But now of course being a small country does not mean that we should not think big. As Cabinet Secretary one of my first years to officials was to seek out ideas and evidence from across the world. All too often in the Celtic nations we view things through the prism of the English experience. And because of that influence and scale we sometimes forget that policy and principles over the border are the exception to international practice and development rather than the norm. So over the last 18 months many of our flagship developments here in Wales have been shaped by a truly international perspective. Our opposition to segregation and selection in schools is based on OECD examples. The importance of reducing class sizes to help those to close the attainment gap and raise standards and support teachers draws on the North American experience in particular. Our investment and focus on rural education has been informed by best practice in Ontario. Having been invited to join the Atlantic Rim Collaboratory working with the likes of Ireland, Finland and California we are able to test our approaches on wellbeing, reducing bureaucracy and emerging thoughts on accountability and measuring performance. And our wider reforms to further and higher education are led by research from the very best international leaders and experts. So as I often say to be the best we need to learn from the best and I'm delighted that we have Steve and Marco and of course Graham here today to share their thoughts and to hear from you. But I am equally keen that as we innovate we also influence international approaches and that's why we've been working with Ireland to update them on our pioneer school model. That's why we've been briefing Ontario on our curriculum and assessment reforms and that's why we've been updating Scotland on the success of regional working. And these aren't just government-led initiatives. There are opportunities for teachers and others to get involved. We have to be confident in ourselves, in our reforms, in our approach and in our collective ability to raise standards. Now you'll know that our National Mission Action Plan published last year sets out the four objectives which will enable us to fulfil our mission to raise standards, reduce the attainment gap and deliver an education system that is a source of national pride and public confidence. These four objectives support bringing our new curriculum to life and those objectives are developing a high quality education profession, inspirational leaders working collaboratively to raise standards, strong and inclusive schools committed to excellence, equity and wellbeing and finally robust assessment, evaluation and accountability arrangements supporting a self-improvement system. Our focus at this conference is that last objective, robust assessment, evaluation and accountability. So as we develop and design our new curriculum and assessment arrangements, questions of accountability are being considered and addressed. My starting point is that school and system level assessment and evaluation will drive improvement for all learners, that we ensure and enhance public confidence in our system, that we better recognise the value added by teachers and schools and that there is self-evaluation and peer review at every level of the system. Now other sessions today will provide you with more detail on our current thinking, already informed by many of you has had teachers, unions, international experts and evidence and many others working within our system. I just mentioned the need to better measure the value added provided by teachers and schools across the system and you have my guarantee that we will move strongly in that direction. We know that despite our many strengths and improvements Welsh education still faces many, many challenges and none is bigger than tackling the difference in attainment between children from our most deprived communities, children who are care experienced and their peers. Now I understand that poverty and its persistent barrier to learning has its origins well beyond the school gates and schools don't have the answer to every problem. But as education secretary it is my job and I would argue as school leaders it is your job that once these children and young people are under our care we will from day one support them to reach their full potential. I have spoken many times of my aspiration for a system that complements and combines equity and excellence and that is a key theme of our national mission. Now we have made good progress over recent years, the gap has certainly narrowed and that is thanks to you and your staff's hard work, dedication and commitment but we must continue that momentum and we must continue that focus. The pupil development ground a policy as you know that is very close to my heart continues to make a big difference in supporting these pupils. Evidence shows that schools are forever learning new and innovative ways of making every penny of that grant make a difference and I urge you all to look at the ever growing body of evidence and continue to learn from one another in our ever growing self-improving system. I am also conscious that while as a government we could pat ourselves on the back for the progress that has been made there is no room for complacency in this regard. We must never lower our expectations for any of our young people no matter what their background or their home experience. I want we need equity and excellence for all and that is why I will never apologise for keeping the pressure up rather than taking the easy option of coasting or offering up a council of despair that things can never improve for these children from their most challenging communities. I welcome the strong action that has been taken in switching pupils from VTech science for instance to GCSE science. Now I understand that this may well skew our overall GCSE results for a while and it makes it easy for my opponents and the media to attack us but you know what I believe that we can be proud that thousands upon thousands of more pupils in Wales are now taking science GCSEs as opposed to BSEC. That gives us the opportunity to raise standards and improve opportunities for all of our learners and most of all for our learners from our poorest background. It's a tough decision but I believe it's the right one. Now we are achieving match in moving forward together as a self-improving system. We now have a regional model for school improvement based on many of the principles of a self-improving system. We have strengthened the notion of a self-improving system through the role of schools in providing leadership for others, for example in our pioneer network, the national schools categorisation system with its focus on support, the emerging ITE partnerships, the growing number of schools committed to developing as login organisations themselves and many initiatives designed to share subject and leadership expertise. These show that we are using our scale as a system to our advantage, thinking big in our ambitions and aspirations but nimble enough to work together to move forward with a shared purpose. Now I didn't think it would be right or indeed credible to speak to you today without touching upon funding issues. This is raised with me as you can imagine in every school that I visit and I understand the importance of this. I am someone who throughout my political life has fought as a priority for additional funding to support our schools. As an assembly member and leader of an opposition party I argued additional school funding every single year in negotiation with previous Welsh governments in exchange for the support of their budgets. This led to the establishment of the pupil development grant, as I mentioned earlier, which is now worth an additional £90 million for schools every year across Wales. Since becoming education secretary we as a government have even gone further by doubling the support available via this grant for our very youngest learners. I have also listened to teachers on the front line who raised with me the problems that they face teaching large class sizes in our primary sector and in response will we be making available over this assembly term some £36 million to support that new policy. Now many assembly members have tried to resist this initiative but we have listened to those working on the front line. And you know that it has not passed me by that there are particular funding pressures. I hear it often enough from head teachers across the country that time, crucial time and effort and funding is taken up by school maintenance issues as opposed to supporting learners. So that is why over the weekend I announced as a government that we will be making available an additional £14 million which will be allocated direct to schools. This will address small scale maintenance costs and every single school across our country will benefit from this money and I am determined it will find its way into your budgets. Yet believe me when I say that I recognise even with these additional resources that school budgets are stretched, times are hard. The continued austerity agenda has led to the budget of the Welsh government being reduced by well over £1 billion and I am afraid to say that I don't see these hard times ending any time soon. The need for austerity and indeed the word austerity trips very easy off the lips of certain politicians but it is you on the front line that are dealing with what austerity really really means. The Welsh government will continue to call for additional resources to be spent on our public services which would mean we would be more able to further support schools. Yet I also recognise and I see it in the innovative approaches that head teachers across our nation are taking that funding isn't the answer to everything. Funding standards is not just about spending more money but we have to recognise the pressures are real but at the same time we cannot allow the pressure on budgets to reduce our ambition for our children because they deserve better than that. I also can't leave you today without mentioning PISA. Everybody in our system must understand that PISA allows us to judge ourselves against the world. It remains the recognised international benchmark for skills. It has never been more important to demonstrate to ourselves, perhaps particularly to ourselves and to the world that our young people can compete with the best. PISA may not be in school performance measures but it is high stakes for us as a country. If you subscribe to the national mission and if you are sitting in this room then I really hope that you do then you must also subscribe to the importance of PISA. As improved results in these international tables are integral to our education system installing national pride and public confidence that we all want to deliver. So that first transatlantic phone call I mentioned at the beginning of my contribution may indeed have been historic but you know what? The conversation that took place on that momentous call was actually about the weather. For all of us here today it is less about how we are communicating but more about what we are communicating. We as a country are embarking on an exciting reform programme that will one way or another transform the future lives of a generation, their lives, our society, being shaped by all of you the people in this room. If you ask me that's better than any conversation about the weather but together we are also in the process of making Welsh education history. Diolch yn fawr.


of open knowledge using a prototype and textbook platform and your presenters today are Erwin and Michelle so please give a warm welcome to Erwin and Michelle. Well hi everybody it's nice to see you here and Michelle I don't know how your voice is going to be working we did have some audio problems this morning so Michelle do you still want to try your audio right now? I'll try my audio. Okay so I think we're still having the same problem with distortion and so on so I'll kind of proceed for now and hopefully things will sort out so hope you don't get too tired just listening to me. I talk a lot so but anyway I also want to acknowledge that Dr Michael Pascovacius is also part of this development team he's not able to be here today and then also Tannis Morgan has been quite involved with early stages but in the later stages she just became very busy with her work and was unable to participate in this but we certainly want to acknowledge her work as well too so welcome to this really glad to to have you do this join us especially at the end of the sessions and we know that's usually when people are thinking about getting back to the hotel and the airport and all that so thank you for participating and I hope you find this interesting and helpful okay I just I'm not able to advance the slide here are you able to see that okay all right so I'll give an overview I think what excuse me for a moment because I've lost my slides okay so I'd like to give a land acknowledgement and it's something that we do in Canada and I think in many other countries around the world that have to acknowledge the fact that we do live on land that was colonized many years ago and so and our universities exist on these lands and we acknowledge with gratitude that the universities where we work and learn are situated on the traditional and unceded lands of indigenous peoples we're teaching and learning have taken place since time immemorial and that's something that we keep in mind as we share the knowledge not only that we create here but that we've gained so richly with from the peoples who were here many many years before us as well too so as an overview open textbooks some of the thinking that Michelle and Tana's and Michael and myself did was thinking about open textbooks we saw some examples of where not only were they some of the gains of my open textbooks just better access to students in terms of cost which of course was a wonderful thing to have and also sort of the traditional five Rs the so-called five Rs of reusing but also the fact of open pedagogies how to design into and part of open textbooks and we thought how can we extend sort of that traditional use of the textbook as a traditional textbook when we're using new textbooks just beyond you know having an ability to distribute them at lower cost and so one of the bigger questions was how how does particular reuse and of content work within our instructional environments and so that's something that we kind of put our minds to you're familiar I'm sure with the five Rs of openness retain reuse revise remix ability to redistribute and so the two areas that were interested in particular were directing more focus on these three Rs beyond redistribute so reusing and revising how does that play out in the textbook how can we extend those concepts to making open textbooks even a more active and open part of our of our pedagogies kind of the early roots of this and this is a blog post that a couple of us put together after OER 17 so actually come to think of it this is kind of like a fifth year anniversary it's amazing how long this concept has been developing but several of us were in the cab heading back to our hotel after OER 17 which I think was in London is that London Michelle yeah yeah and that was probably one of the first OER sessions where the notion of openness beyond just OER sort of the sort of the bare bones idea of OER and the copyright issues and creative commons and so on started to really open up for us I think in terms of the wider picture of social justice and it was a really buzzy conference because I think there were just new directions of thinking opening up and so we got together in a fondabridge tradition we sat down in a pub which is a great place to get some thinking done and we thought what are some of the other Rs beyond the ones that are tied in with copyright and these are just ones that we just kind of brainstormed over time such as here's a few examples like resist, ruffle, reflect, reframe, reclaim, ramble, read and so on with the idea that there are so many more ways that we can extend just the letter R which is just one letter of the alphabet into different ways of expanding on the possibility as of open educational resources and in this particular context open textbooks if you look at the last column we think a lot about indigenization starting from a place of respect recognizing what has happened relearning our histories retelling our histories and learning how to reconcile so that was kind of like a I think a trigger moment for us when we thought we need to do some more thinking and how do we relate that back to textbooks where in some ways I think we're still using old older forms of pedagogies and just writing them over the potential of open textbooks so how cool how can we move ahead from that and so Michelle do you want to try your audio and see how it's going how is it now I've changed not bad not bad okay so we'll try for a moment okay okay hi everyone I might not last for long so Erwin please interrupt me if I start to go wonky so just as we were rethinking this the starting we thought that a design-based research method might be the best way to try to work through all the thinking around coming up with a different format particularly for OERs and OER textbooks so we've been going through a process of analysis exploration design and construction evaluation and reflection for about the past three over three years four years almost now as we've gathered feedback and moved through the process so I'll go to the next slide so we started with the analysis and exploration and we did some data collection and analysis I'll just we'll go into the details of this as we sort of go through the next few stages so we tested the concept we collected some data and then we actually through that feedback from people came up with some research outputs already so we've done a paper that kind of looked at what it might look like to rethink the textbook and rethink OER resources based on that feedback we've developed a platform and an activity framework that we hope can work with students to sort of honor the kinds of things we were looking at from that feedback from from colleagues about what an open an un textbook possibly could look like and we are now in our stage of evaluation and reflection and a couple of phases of that where we've conducted some course pilots and developed a learning design focused reader based on this platform that we are just starting to launch and use again with students so we're hoping that as we move through our project and we're just in this final phase of collecting data for another year well this spring mostly that we can then really think about sustainability and maintenance how we keep this thing that we've built going how we can spread and share the different use cases the platform the reader and we'll talk a little bit more about that and how do you maintain a user community of around this this resource and platform and idea really of trying to bring in more student voice and as and sort of that critical approach into the learning design right am i still good or when are you good okay i think i was supposed to do sorry we're distracted now that i haven't had my audio so our first analysis and exploration and this actually goes back to like OER 19 and where we were asking people for their ideas and thoughts about how we open up our OER to bring that as everyone was talking about earlier the social justice perspective more equity agency student voice and so we gathered feedback at four different conferences and did analysis on those on all of that feedback so now a little bit more about the concept and one thing that i just want to emphasize here too as well is that a tool like this is not necessary to generate this kind of a pedagogical approach however with with sort of an entanglement entanglement of technology and pedagogy and the fact that textbooks are used so much particularly in some western countries to mediate teaching and learning we thought it would be helpful to have a tool that can kind of promote this this kind of an approach in the data gathering that we got talking to people all around the world as michelle was describing these were some of the main data points that came out of the analysis that we did from from many many big amounts of feedback people wanted multiple perspectives or lenses rather than just linear univocality so how can we build more perspectives or lenses into the learning into the textbook the classroom discussions how can we have bring in forums reflective writing and community generated text rather than just text that kind of comes prepackaged into the learning environment also knowledge beyond the fixed object of study in other words having a way in which it can be continually co-created connected to the communities of learners from where they're at and from the needs that they bring to that particular learning environment knowledge is more contextual and distributed um that it lives outside of the classroom again what the settings of the teaching and the learning in the classroom itself all influence the knowledge and how it is perceived within within that learning environment the wisdom of indigenous ways of knowing and connection which involves relationality and how do we build relations to from our the communities that we live in the communities that we work in the communities within the classroom and within the learning environment itself how do we build that within the knowledge that we're building itself um how do we conceptualize the ownership of knowledge uh within within that same setting and there was a lot of people said why can't we have more shift in power relations among students uh instructors and institutions how how can we actually arrange a learning resource that can actually help facilitate some of these things and so um just so the so that kind of led us to a framework where we thought if learners can take the content that's there and actually be involved in and by content that's there i mean that's originally seeded into the into the open textbook how can they continue to extend and reframe and you remember the that um multiple ours framing that came earlier how can they repurpose re-extend reframe rebuild that knowledge respond to it from different aspects whether it's if they say i want to look at it from a different issue um i have a different role perspective one student is an administrator another one is a teacher another one's instructional designer um or different lenses the BIPOC lens lgbtq plus and so on a decolonizing lens a lens from the global south so um we invite students to take the original content that is provided in what would be traditionally like an open textbook and say okay you write another chapter um and we use the word chapter loosely but another section that can continue to grow that particular resource or what setting do you come from do you come from a professional workplace do you have a community setting are you within the health setting a certain discipline um so that's how we try to build it so that students can bring different perspectives different settings different issues different lenses depending on what is important to them and use that as an exercise to continue to develop content and open up um for the perspectives on the original content that was provided okay so based on all the feedback we worked with uh tom woodward who is a wizard of building platforms um and designed it with we met with tom multiple times um and tried to build in some of the following pieces into a platform that would kind of honor some of the the the pedagogical processes that we were hoping for um including the framework that erwin just um presented so we were it ended up being a wordpress theme that we're using um that has some customization and it focused on agency so allowing students to um be authors and in at the moment we have chapter but we also have a section called voices and so students can respond to um a chapter they can then rewrite or respond to it um in a voice they can also then communicate with each other through via comments and we'll show a little bit of how that's working um we looked at voice and again empowered to speak with our own voices and i think that's been very powerful for the students it's a little bit different than them writing a blog um as they're engaging with the content directly they can actually um the way it's built students can if they want or participants can contribute anonymously so there is a sense there that they can choose and there's lots of choice about how they want to contribute if they want to put their name or not um we tried to add in structure that's a little bit more non-linear so that we're not recreating the idea that a textbook is going to guide you step by step through something that you can enter at different places um so that's not as easy to do as we had hoped um so in the end we do have various topics that are organized and sort of linearly on a page but they um there's no structure for the textbook about how you should work through it um we built an accessibility with udl principles and we also encouraged when we were doing our call for contributions to the learning design specific reader um you know inclusion of multi multimedia and different forms of media and then we wanted to ensure that it was quite interactive and so that framework encourages the extending and reframing and i think the framework um from what we've heard from students who have used it has been really really powerful for them um and one of the things that we talked a lot about is that this kind of um space could be quite chaotic um and students sometimes don't know how to contribute so that framework really gives them something to um build on it's a really nice foundation for them and it's really got them to shift their thinking which i think has been really really important so in this this is just an example of the um rethink learning design topics and it's probably a little bit hard to read but here's an example of how we try to introduce non-linearity um the topics are organized um but you can on the main page you can choose all um sort of anywhere to go um and so this just came together a final kind of in january february we had our final versions that we shared with authors and we're still just thinking through um how we want to to launch it for people to use and we'll talk a little bit about that in next steps so in each of these chapters there's a framework provided that students can or participants can respond um and create their own voice so how do we how do we engage that outside um we're using it in the classroom right now and i think that's its intention but looking for feedback as well on others who might want to use it and how they might want to use it everyone do you want to add anything you just have five left by the way everyone yeah um just giving our time left i yeah we'll just let's just keep keep going okay sounds good um and we just wanted to highlight very quickly the peer review process that we um and we did an open peer review process for this so that was part of it um and really the criteria is about um that representing um being respectful of diversity representing different kinds of knowledge and we really looked for in each of those chapters ways and activities for people to actually engage directly with the content so it's not just a chapter it's also a an interactive engagement okay and so very quickly we'll just talk about the research that we're currently doing because we'd like to share so on the right hand side is an example of one of the test activities that we did in one of my courses at Royal Roads so the prototypes now we've been used in two different instances at Royal Roads um students have completed the these activities in both courses and we're actually in the second year right now so we're gathering another round of feedback after they use it again which is nice because they will actually be able to engage with the student content from last year so if you look down on the right um you see that the issues roll perspectives lenses and settings framework is actually built in that's at the bottom of each page and we have quite a few responses in each of those sections so students have have responded to the original reflect respond and reframe activity there's some content there and then they're also commenting so you don't actually see the amount of comments so there's three or four comments usually also on each so we've done a first pass of coding um and interviews with six students and uh we are um I'll keep going so we'll talk about our results everyone so far early yeah so this is our first pass of coding we're not going to get into this just to show that we're getting some really interesting feedback on everything from comparison to other resources to positionality um about critical educational technology the value of their contribution things like the value of openness um and the utility of the framework response and so on so a lot of there's a lot of kind of uh good reflection on from students on what it is they're actually doing here kind of a medic medic cognitive mirror of of of how their thinking is expanding as to how they're interacting with content that's given to them what's the some of the processes involved in extending and reframing it and this is just another way of looking at the at the data so we'll continue to process this data and both Michelle and I are using it in our current courses the graduate courses in the learning and technology program at roller roads university and then once we've done two rounds then we will start getting more deeply into analysis and publish some more of the results and continue to modify the um the tool as well because you know we are that we always had the design-based research framework in the back of our mind so everything that we do with it continues to fold back into improving learning and improving the tool and just a few comments from students and I'll read the first one I'm from a very corporate learning environment interested to see how the same material or the same educational issue could be spread almost into into almost like a spider web so many different layers depending on the setting in which you work and the setting in which perspective from which you are learning so it was really good to see different interpretations of one article from my peers who are in a very different setting for me yeah and I really liked the next quote this is a different way of engaging in content which is looking for what you said building and reframing and building and framing so that that shifting is really coming through the next one you have to give up a little bit of control it's a little bit like putting yourself out there it's demystifying the academy like this idea of I don't know everything and I want to engage and I want people to engage with me so that we can learn together versus just always kind of relying on certain people who have all that knowledge so that's kind of a reflection of more of a democratizing approach to learning within the classroom setting and the final one it's about me I mean I'm the one living in this course in this moment in time and I have my other job and I'm engaging so maybe I should give it my all like invest a bit so I think seeing that they're engaging with others outside possibly the community too I think also has been impactful for them all right and I think we're out of time but just the final wrap-up so we're looking at different use cases for this so the we have the reader itself that's sitting on a platform but we also have built the platform so it might be that people are interested in the framework itself and the way it works with students so we're looking at that how an instructor might take the current rethink ld reader and the link is there if you would like to take a look it's some fantastic work from 12 authors 12 author teams really and about critical approaches to learning design a variety of topics and if you would like to contact us and use it there's a contact form on one of the pages in the reader and then also maybe you want to take a copy of it and redo it like use the whole thing in a course so we're just trying to think through how all of those might work and what hosting might look like doing a bit of further testing and analysis so we can make some changes from student feedback and then continuing the research as well and I think that's it for now and we don't want to wear


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Save 10% with my code Bobby10 on raw, organic, grass-fed and grass-finished, freeze-dried organ meats from grassland nutrition. Link in the description box. All right guys, welcome back to the channel. If you're new man with Bobby, guys, today we're going to react to Shams Tabrizzi and his 40 rules of love. Shams Tabrizzi was a Persian Shafi poet who is credited as the spiritual instructor of Mevlana Jalal al-Din Muhammad Bahi, also known as Rumi, and is referenced with great reverence in Rumi's poetic collection, in particular Gewan Shams Tabrizzi, the works of Shams of Tabriz. Tradition holds that Shams taught Rumi in seclusion in Konya for a period of 40 days before fleeing for Damascus. The tomb of Shams Tabrizzi was recently nominated to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site. If you've been following this channel, you know that I have a fable for Sufism and Islamic poetry, so therefore I'm very excited to watch today's video. With no further ado, let's have a look. Yeah, I don't really appreciate the whispering tone of this. The next rule I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. Nevertheless, yes, it is absolutely correct, of course, that God becomes a reflection of us. If you look at the atheist, for example, he does not believe in God.  People are dying, children are suffering, there are wars everywhere, poverty, hunger and whatnot. What an unjust God. This, of course, just a reflection of them. They have those fears within them. They cannot accept life for what it is. It is similar to the vegan, of course. The vegan cannot accept that the lion eats the gazelle. They really do not understand that nature has its purpose and has to be the way that it is. And the same applies to anybody else, no matter if believer or non-believer. People simply cannot accept certain things in this world, certain things about God and therefore they blame it then on God, but ultimately just a reflection of themselves. If you see, for example, many people in the so-called red pill community blaming women for being sluts, but then at the same time they're going after sluts. So who is the real problem here? The path to the truth is a labor of the heart, not of the head. Make your heart your primary guide, not your mind. Meet, challenge and ultimately prevail over your nerves with your heart, the knowledge of God. Yes, absolutely. Know yourself and you will know God. This ultimately one of the oldest truths that we have access to, because if you understand yourself, your ego, you will understand what God is not. God is not limited like your ego is. Your ego will die at some point, either during this lifetime with an ego death experience or moreover when your physical body actually dies. And all that is truly left is God, of course. God is the polar opposite of His creation. Within this creation you have a temporary timeframe in which everything decays. God, on the other hand, is eternal. To truly understand this, however, we have to get away from our head. He is correct here. We cannot understand it within our head, because our head, our mind is bound to time. Our mind is great at solving certain problems within time. We can do mathematics here. We can repair a car. We can think with a problem-solving mentality. However, the knowledge of God is found within the heart. We have to get away from our rationale in order to access this truth. You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe, because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue or church. True. But if you are still in need of knowing where exactly His abode is, there is only one place to look for Him in the heart of a true lover. Coming from a background of having plenty of spiritual experiences, I can only relate to this. Of course, I know that dogmatic religious theological mind will discard this and some will even say that this is shirk. However, if you truly look into the matter of things, those deep spiritual understandings are only found within the heart. The heart is truly like a pathway, like a connection to God. We cannot access God in our everyday waking consciousness. It is impossible. It is created by God like that. In our everyday waking consciousness, we do everyday waking consciousness things. We go to work, we eat, we have fun with our friends and whatnot. God is not physical. Therefore, we cannot perceive Him with the physical senses. For that, we have to go back into our heart. And even here, we are not speaking about a physical biological heart. We are speaking about the spiritual heart, of course. Intellect and love are made of different materials. Exactly right. Intellect dies people in knots and risks nothing. Yes. But love dissolves all dangles and risks everything. Intellect is always cautious and advised, which I just say. Whereas love says, oh never mind, take the plunge. Intelligence does not easily break down. Whereas love can effortlessly reduce yourself to rubble. But treasures are hidden among ruins. Heights. Treasures. Oh man, I really don't like this voice. However, yes, the rules are correct. Yet again, this is what I've been saying throughout the video. Intellect and love are polar opposites ultimately because intellect in a way is the ego. It is useful for sure to understand things rationally. It is part of the whole. However, only love will transcend this limited understanding of the ego. And God is love ultimately. Love is within God. Love only comes from God. God is the origin of all things. And therefore, yes, naturally, love stems from him. To truly understand God, why we worship him is, of course, an act of love. What else is there? Of course, you can take the position that we have to fear God. And therefore, our worship is just out of fear. But that is not the quintessence of things. How could it be? God is the all merciful. God is the all merciful that loves us. And therefore, of course, our worship is an act of love as well. If we remind ourselves of that, we can return to our heart, which is yet again the true connection to God. Most of the problems of the world stem from linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstandings never take words at face value. The new step into the zone of love, language, as we know it becomes obsolete. Words can only be grasped through silence. Absolutely correct. Think about this logically as well. Words are so extremely limited. I know people worship words nowadays. Nevertheless, they are limited. If a foreign person looks at you, smiling, hey, and tells you all kinds of things that you interpret due to their smile as positive, but in reality, they tell you to f**k off. You wouldn't know because your natural emphasis wouldn't be on the words, but it would be on the gestures of that person. You would try to understand the person without words. And this is really what God is ultimately. God is only found within the silence. Think about it, man. Why did the great man go into seclusion? Why did Prophet Muhammad go into the cave? Why did Jesus go into the desert? Why did Moses go onto the mountain?  Why didn't they get the revelation just like that, working, walking, talking to friends? No, they had to be secluded. They had to sit in silence in order to receive the wisdom of God. This is the only way it works. In Orthodox Christianity, we have a practice called hessicast. And this is a prayer of silence. Go and deep within yourself, contemplating in silence, receiving the wisdom of God this way. Once you enter the zone of love, as he said, here words become obsolete, man. Listening to human language sounds like listening to a chicken quack, quack, quack all day. Listening to a dog bark. It is so primitive that true divine knowledge is beyond words. Loneliness and solitude are two different things. Yep. It is easy to delude yourself into isolation. It's better for us as it means being alone without feeling lonely. But eventually it is best to find a person who will be your remember only in another person's heart. Can you truly see yourself and the presence of God within you?  How can God be within you? This absolute polytheism, this pantheism, et cetera, et cetera. And this is why so many traditionalists discard the beauty of Islamic poetry. They don't believe that this has any place within Islam, that this is a bidah. But the Quran as well asks the people to reason and it asks about the people of knowledge who are those people truly. Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. All doors remain closed. It is easy to be grateful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given, but also for all that he has been denied. Yes, absolutely. And this comes down to the Quranic narrative as well that everything is a test. So we should be happy about this test. This test comes from God and therefore ultimately it is good only because we believe that we should get something doesn't mean that it is right.  Never run out of patience. For they know the time is needed for the crescent one. Yes, absolutely beautiful report. Patience does not mean to endure passively, but it means to see the end of a process. Ultimately, when I was bodybuilding back in the day, I was patient because I knew where I was headed. As long as you have a plan, a direction, you can be patient. If you don't have a plan, then you don't know what you're waiting for. And ultimately nothing is coming to you. However, if you set your sail, so to speak, and your ship swims towards a set direction, then you can be sure, of course, that you're moving towards that direction. And hence you can be patient. If you take your phone and you put on Google Maps, you're traveling to a destination that says 30 minutes, then you know, all right, in 30 minutes, God willing, I will be there. Therefore, patience becomes automatic when it is bound to an outcome that you already determined. It's really important. As well, the part about tolerance here, it is not about discarding that the rose has thorns. No, it is about understanding, of course, that you can hurt yourself when you touch the thorns. But nevertheless, it is about redirecting your focus from the thorns onto the beauty of the rose. Yes. This is something that you cannot really explain if you haven't had the experience yet. Again, people will say, ah, those mystical experiences, all of this is blasphemous and whatnot. But truly, if you haven't had those experiences, you will never know. Only if you go within, you will see a whole landscape of possibilities that have been hidden from you. You can look outward as much as you want to. You can research online, you can read books, you can listen to people as much as you like. The knowledge, however, is found within yourself. Even when you resonate with a person, you resonate within. If I say something that makes sense to you, it makes sense for you within yourself.  Yet again, therefore, no matter which knowledge we are talking about, even when it comes from the external, has to enter internally. And guess what? Internally, we already have an abundance of knowledge, of wisdom, of beauty, of love that we can access if we dare to do so. The midwife knows that when there is no pain, the way for the baby cannot be opened. Deep. And the mother cannot be apart. Likewise, foreign yourself to be born. How true is necessary? Just as clear needs to go through intense hate to become strong. Love can only be perfected in pain. Very deep, man. This reminds me of the Buddha who said life is suffering. The understanding that only suffering can transmute your character. I'm going to give you a bodybuilding example as well.   Nothing will change. Or maybe things will even get worse. Because you're not suffering in the moment, you will suffer later. Suffering is the name of the game. However, if you get yourself up from the couch, you go to the gym, you suffer in the gym, even though the suffering can be transmuted into pleasure as well.  With this pain, with this suffering, you transmute your physical body through this transmutation of the physical body. Of course, you're transmuting your mind as well. It forms your character. Discipline reflects within your character. You will have more self-respect for the things that you do, obviously. If you don't do anything, if you go the path of least resistance, you won't change whatsoever. This is an absolutely beautiful passage. All right, guys. And this is it for today's video, Shams Tabrizzi, what a deep thinker this man is. Obviously, as the teacher of Rumi, he must have been. Those teachings, however, are not something that resonates with the majority of people. And that is totally normal. I understand most people are not mystics. Most people are not philosophers. Most people are not interested in poetry. And that is all fine, because we are ignorant. However, if you pair ignorance with arrogance, this is where we have an issue, because so many laymen will believe that those great men were actually heretics, people that went against Islam and whatnot. They will point the finger without having any practical experience within those fields. This is pure ignorance and arrogance, guys. I said it before and I see it everywhere. I do not care for your religious label. What I'm interested in is to see people that have an open mind and can truly think for themselves, can truly reflect and can see the truth as well. I do not remember where I read this quote, but it was so absolutely beautiful. It was about truth and what it means that you will have people that will seek truth within books over books over books, trying to find the truth. However, once you found the truth truly for yourself within yourself, then you will see the people that are upon this truth. I believe that this was El Ghazali. It must have been. So this is something that we can only experience for ourselves. If we go within ourselves and we find the truth, then we will see other people that know that truth as well. How else would you understand what is right, what is wrong? If somebody else tells you, how can you trust that person? Are people not all flawed after all? But yet again, guys, this is just my perspective. This is my approach to life. I have to experience truth. I have to experience it for myself to understand if it is right or wrong. I cannot just take another man's word for it. This is not how I function. If this way, however, works for you, that is great as well. I'm not here to sway anybody one way or the other. I'm just here to share my perspective. All right, guys, but this is it for today's video. If you liked it, leave it a thumbs up. If you haven't subscribed already, guys, please do so. And if you want to support this channel, all the links are in the description box below. Thank you very much, guys. And as always, may God bless you all. Much love and peace.


Well, thank you for this game, thanks for this game. Are you ready to confirm that? No, no, no, please pass the test on me. It's a good health and power and energy, and the energy of all these steps, so I wish you both a good day. Thank you so much. Well, I'm sure for all of you, we're looking forward to some great conversations here. I had much pleasure with that. Thank you, the player. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. President? No, that's fine. No problem. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. President Biden, again. Best regards to the president in Thursday. I wish him the victory. And he will decide where, in what direction. And it's very important for our country, the United States, together with us. We count on your support, thanks to Congress, for giving us the possible support, and we're very thankful to a lot of people that will ask all these difficulties. But under your leadership, Ukraine has defended its sovereignty. It's fought back valiantly. You've led Ukraine people to do things that were unimaginable to lost people from the very beginning. And so we've seen grit, ingenuity, courage on part of Ukraine and people that has really impressed the world. The message that I bring to you today, Mr. President, is that the United States of America is with you. It will remain with you through the long haul. What happens here in Ukraine, not only matters to Ukraine, but it matters to the rest of the world. It's certainly matters to the United States of America. And so the United States and our allies and partners will continue to work to give Ukraine those that need to be successful. And we're off to do the work necessary to get what you need to continue the fight. But again, Mr. President, thanks for hosting us here. Thank you. Thank you, President. Thanks.