So back many, many years ago,
when I was first working with A Course in Miracles,
I just really had a very deep, profound, insightful experience,
that, "Huh! This big thick blue book is really just about cause and effect."
And once you get the gist of it, that only the mind is causative, which is very important-
that can't be missed or skipped over- but then comes the transfer of training.
How willing am I to practice that, with everything that's floating through my consciousness?
How willing am I, on a daily basis, or more of an hourly, or moment-by-moment basis,
how willing am I to reel it back off the screen?
Any types of upset, disappointment, sadness,
anything that's not supremely happy.
How willing am I to, for a moment, bring it back to my mind and hand it over to the Holy Spirit? And say, "I was wrong, oh there I was wrong again."
I was wrong-minded again. I thought there was some causation there.
Something was happening to me.
Something in the world was coming at me that was out of my out of my hands;
it had nothing to do with my mind, when actually it all has everything to do with my mind.
So, to me that's what this experience, earthly experience, has been, it's just been about practical application,
just being humble enough to do the watching of the mind.
And being humbled by that.
The first time I read that in the Course, "Your mind is much too tolerant of mind wandering,"
I was like, "Whoa."
Yeah, I want to, I want to come into alignment.
I don't want to use my mind or my time for wandering,
seeking and searching in vain.
I would rather seek and find.
So to me it's all into, if we're called to forgive, then what's the attraction of that?
It's just this glorious state of nonjudgment.
That's worth everything.
That peace is its own reward. Nonjudgment is so natural.
It's almost like when we begin to trust and surrender and relax, we almost like fall into a bed of feathers.
And the bed of feathers is nonjudgment.
It's always been there- so soft, ready for us to just fall back.
Some of you might remember from years ago the Nestea commercials.
Anybody remember Nestea?
They would always say, "Take the plunge."
And there were these slow-motion people falling back
into a swimming pool or something. Puuuushooo..refreshing!
A very strong image, falling backwards and splashing into refreshing water.
And in one sense, where Jesus is saying, take the atonement plunge just fall back, fall back into me.
Fall back into this soft warm light.
That's who you are.
And if it's so simple as just being in alignment with the miracle,
then it must be that when he says trust- development of trust- trust is the basis on which all the characteristics of a teacher of God rest,
then basically, trust in Spirit, or the Divine, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Higher Self, intuition, call it whatever you want,
that trust is the key.
And why is that trust so important?
Other than, how else are you going to experience that everything without exception is all involuntary?
The miracle is involuntary.
And all the conditioning of the ego and all the conditioning of the world and all of our educational systems are all saying,
there's things that you can control and there's things that you can't control.
Again, what is all Involuntary, which is, in the miracle perception is involuntary,
the ego always splits everything up into opposites.
The involuntary and the voluntary.
Are you doing this involuntarily or voluntarily?
You see how it's just more opposites?
And presence doesn't know those opposites. Presence transcends all opposites, all possibility of opposites.
So for me,
when I plunged into the Course and immersed into it,
Jesus let me study it for a while, but he had a lot of commentary when I was studying it.
He started in all kinds of commentary, pointing things out, go back look at this and so on so forth.
But it was really I would say for me that the study of A Course in Miracles was a very brief period,
until It was like you got it now? You got the gist of it? Do you have the gist?
Now we're gonna practice.
Practice, practice, practice, practice.
Make no exceptions.
Practice, practice, practice, practice. That's where the transformation comes in, that's where the experience comes in.
Is through making no exceptions to the principles.
So it's not just another book to be studied or memorized, or deduce scholarly papers on, or so forth.
It's an actual conversion device for the mind, and then the only way you make the conversion is by giving yourself over to it.
And for me, after about five years, it was like Jesus is like, "Okay,
enough of the study,
five years was plenty." It was, "Now I'm taking you on a road trip.
We're going out for some practical experience." And that that was just another device.
You know you don't have to take road trips, but in my case, that was a sense of, I'm pulling you out of your familiar perception,
familiar friends, family, city, location and gonna take you out on the road,
so we can go about this rather quickly; learn to transfer these principles very rapidly.
And then we all know those points when you're just in this gloriously happy experience,
and you can't really say how you got there, because there is no formula.
And you are just in so much happiness and joy,
but you do feel a bit like a twig in the river;
like you're being carried in the vast experience.
You're in that vast experience, you are that vast experience.
But you can't break it apart into pieces. You can't analyze it. You can't figure it out.
Can't say, "Well, I did this and this and this and then it happened."
It's just another story.
But that experience of everything flowing,
without conscious control, or conscious effort.
That's the flow that we were talking about early on, that's the flow.
The ease of that is everything.
And there's no sense of a personal identity in that, and there's no sense of a story with that.
It has no goals.
It has no direction in the world in a worldly sense.
It's not pointing in a certain direction.