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-Thank you. That's a good set of topics to dive into today.
The one that's-- of all of those-- that's coming to mind
is the one that Jason mentioned at the very end there
about you need your function. You need the vitality,
the joy, the energy of being in your purpose,
or your function, in order to be able to handle
the darkness when it comes up. And one thing is really
allowing yourself to really hear that function,
and be given that function and the other thing is just
your willingness to devote your whole being to it.
And often time's I'll talk about how when I first came
accross the Course, and after I'd studied it for some years
and immersed myself into it, I went through this kind of
feeling of being called by God. And feeling a little bit of
fear of saying a big yes, and ultimately this big yes
came out of me and through me. And there's a passage in
the Bible that says something to the effect of
"for those whom much is given, much will be asked"
and I never really understood what that meant
until I said yes to God. And God will ask a lot of you.
Believe me. If you think you've had full-time jobs
before, no. (David laughs) You don't even know what
full-time is. For those whom much is given,
much will be asked. It basically turned into 24/7
about 20 some odd years ago, where it's just been
like an activation, and I think that's characteristic of us.
We could share a little bit about that because sometimes
when people enter in they get a sense of that,
but for us, we don't really have days off.
We don't really have vacations. Except in the
state of mind that you experience the joy, it does feel
like every day is a vacation. That every moment
is a vacation. But in terms of the world, you don't have
"my time" and "His time". There's no division that way.
You don't kind of, when you work in the world you get
their time, the company time, and your time.
You don't get have that any more. It's just one category.
It's all His time. And to the ego it's a bit daunting
because you basically just go full on. You know,
it's almost funny to even hear the thing "time off".
"Do you have down time? Or time off?" And you say, no.
There's no time off. It's just full on. And that's part of
what we're talking about. That's the energy of it.
You know, when we've had even centers
where people have come, people will say,
"do we get the weekends off?" or whatever.
To me it's funny. I'm thinking, what are you
talking about? You know, it's almost incomprehensible,
the idea of "off". "Time off." In the world it's a very
common dichotomy, but for us, we just don't have that.
It just happily never ends. The devotion part of it
is just full on. And to me that just feels so natural.
Yeah, it's good when people come to visit us, come close
to us, or we live in community with people or do retreats
and everything, because that's what the Spirit is
always saying. There is a lesson to learn and
that lesson is to be in the flow of forgiveness.
Just the flow of this Spirit pouring through you.
To be done through is a good metaphor, as if
your body is like a puppet. And you're giving the cross-bar
of the marionette to the Holy Spirit, and saying:
"You, speak through me, laugh through me, hug through me.
Do whatever is necessary to serve the whole through me."
And then you undo the "me". Pretty soon it's just
the Holy Spirit, and the puppet is not really in awareness.
You loose awareness more and more of the puppet
and you just become aligned with that. So, I remember
one time I was reading Gandhi's autobiography
or an article about Gandhi and there was somebody who was
a very sincere seeker that was following
Gandhi around; walking with Gandhi and looking at him.
And he had all these questions; many questions for Gandhi.
And he rattled off maybe 15 or 20 questions to Gandhi,
and Gandhi was just smiling, and he said,
"come and be with me. Follow me around for a while."
Like in other words, he wasn't gonna do like a discourse
or a giant dissertation to try to answer the 20 questions.
He just said follow me around and watch how it goes,
and you'll learn more from watching the body in action
than a bunch or words. You'll see it in demonstration.
And Gandhi was also very good about that, you know,
the story about the woman who came and wanted
Gandhi to tell her daughter--brought her daughter along--
I think she wanted Gandhi to tell her daughter to
stop eating so much sugar. And Gandhi saw the girl.
And the girl left and the mother said,
"okay did you tell her?" and Gandhi said,
"well, it'll all work out." And so when the mother got home
and found out that basically Gandhi did not tell
the daughter to quit eating so much sugar,
came back about a week later when Gandhi would
see them again, and the mother was like,
"what's the deal? I told you to tell my daughter to
stop eating so much sugar!" And Gandhi said,
"I couldn't." He said, "I eat too much sugar." (audience laughs)
Now that's integrity. That's integrity.
He had to stop for a week, his sugar intake, just to
see the daughter again. He couldn't speak something
that wasn't in practice in his own life.
And that's pretty much how we feel. When we say
come, come closer, some closer. We're very
transparent, so come, come as close as you want.
Look as close as you want. We've got nothing to hide.
There's a flow that comes, but one thing I always
say is the Holy Spirit is so very, very practical.
For example, when we-- a lot of us read the Bible
and we had our four Gospels to learn about
Jesus and the apostles and everything.
I don't know, some of you might have come across
The Urantia Book, the last section of The Urantia Book,
which is kind of an expanded version of
the life and teachings of Jesus. You get a real close look
of what's going on with Jesus, the apostles,
the women's corps, which kind of got written out
of the Bible. There was like 40, 70 some women
I think that were with him. All these things that are like
details, which I find very helpful. I would like to know
really what went on, those 2,000 years ago. I mean
the intimate details, like did they have a bank account?
Did the apostles have a bank account? Yes.
Did they have seemingly kind of roles? Yes, among the
12 apostles, there was two that called
the Alpheus twins, who were twins, and basically their
main function through out the three years
of Jesus' public ministry was they were ushers.
Isn't that great? To be called by the Lord,
and given a task of being ushers. That seems
pretty practical. But there was crowds. You see,
crowd control was an aspect of the ministry that they had.
(audience laughs) She's talking you know about tech support
and everything. She's like, "nope we don't have any ushers."
(audience laughs) But we never know. If the Messangers
ever expand, people will-- "okay! I'll be a Messenger!"
"Yes, you're an usher." (David, Francis ,and audience laugh)
My biological father and my biological grandfather
were ushers. That's, they did that for a living,
part time. It's practical. It's crowd control.
They had-- the apostles had-- Andrew was the steward.
They had a steward. We have stewards. You were
a steward once. She nods. Stewards basically handle
a lot of logistical things. You know, like even with this.
It's almost like Linda is stewarding this house.
You know, there's a lot of logistics that
go into a retreat. And if you do this on a daily basis,
like you live this way, there's things to be taken care of.
There's logistics. There was lodging. When they traveled
there was lodging. They needed donkeys. They didn't have
cars back then, but you know, who's gonna
handle the donkeys? You know, (Francis and audience laugh)
there were very many aspects, in a very practical way
these things had to be handled. Even 2,00 years ago.
Things haven't changed that much. I mean the technology has
shifted a little bit-- but there's still very basic things.
Out of the other 12, like Jesus would do a lot
of the teaching, but they had another primary speaker
who was really quite articulate and eloquent
and was quite good with speaking, named Peter.
Some of you remember Peter. And so Peter would do
a lot of the speaking, the public speaking and so forth.
And then you could go through James, and you go through
the rest, and there were functions. And certainly,
even over the so many odd years that we've been together,
there have been an enormous amount of functions
because we've had communities on I don't know how many
different continents. -[Voiceover] Four.
-Four? Four continents. There's been long-term retreats.
I think the longest retreats we did was like six-week-retreats,
but that's a-- you start to get into some of those functions
I mentioned, like a steward. You need that for a
six-week-retreat. Because it's like living together,
and there's lots of things to be handled.
The Spirit is so practical, and then even in terms of
guidelines, people will often ask me, because there
is a lot of literature on boundaries, on setting boundaries.
Setting healthy boundaries and so forth.
I put that under the category of guidance.
There's just, again, the practical guidance of the Spirit is,
what would serve the whole? It's not exclusive,
it's not intended to push anyone away, or push anybody down,
or segregate anybody. The state of mind of forgiveness
doesn't hold on to any kind of judgments or divisions,
so the Holy Spirit and this high state of mind
doesn't see hierarchies. There's no body actually who's
at the beginning, or the middle, or the end.
There's no, like "beginning" and there's no "advanced".
All the things that seem to be the categories of the world
that seem to be very meaningful, are not in
this state of mind. And yet the Spirit knows what is best,
what is helpful, and will actually give very practical
very consistent guidance that will come through,
that is all just like ladder steps. Like rungs on a ladder.
Little steps that you can take. And I've always
loved that about the Spirit. I feel like, you know,
whenever I've prayed and asked for guidance or instructions
I get really clear, specific instructions.
It's not like-- you never get the brush-off from Jesus.
You're going through something, you need some good,
clear, specific guidance. "I love you." What? No.
It's quite the opposite. You know, you get the
very specific, helpful guidance. Sometimes it's in terms of
what to do, what to say, where to go, who to talk to,
you know, that's the whole point of this.
And opening your heart up to really be guided is, again,
guidance is the Holy Spirit's use of judgement.
The ego made up judgement, but the Holy Spirit uses
what the ego made to take you home. To unwind you
from the world. So it's not like you're told, you know,
"never speak", or "never do this". It's very rarely
you have these "never" or "all" statements.
It's just, what's the specific guidance for the moment?
What is the most helpful right now? Very, very practical.
So for us, there's nothing specail about form
and there's nothing special about specifics.
We're very grateful for specific guidance.
Sometimes spiritual teachers and seekers come
to our community for a while, and they marvel.
Sometimes they just marvel, like how is this happening?
And it's just seemingly guidance, or years of guidance.
And things just come very easily, very naturally,
and it's no big deal to us. We aren't questioning
every single move. In fact, the Course is teaching us
not to analyze the motives of others. The Course is teaching
us not to doubt motivations. It's really to come clear
of your own link with God, your own connection with Source.
And to listen, and follow, to that Source.
And so, you know, it's not a good practice
to try to point out errors in others. There's a whole
section in the Course, in the Text, on correction of error.
You know, "never correct a brother because
he is always right, because he is the Christ."
Okay! That's pretty solid advice; not to judge.
Never correct a brother because he's always right,
because he's always the Christ. You know, that takes you
into a humbleness, a stillness, where you're not looking
and asking people constantly about their motivations.
Why did you do this? Why did you do that?
You yourself are taking on the practice where
you're working with tho Holy Spirit on: What is it for?
You're working with the Spirit inside of you.
Help me look honestly at what is it for. What is it for?
It helps you unwind from the world, when you
clearly start to see some of these ego purposes
coming up in your mind, and you go:
"Hm. I don't want those. Those are not serving me anymore.
I will let them go." And then you go through this
purification process.
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