(light piano music)
-You know, it becomes more and more evident
and more aware that everything that you perceive
is a reflection of your mind. So, just funny things have
happened over the years. I remember in the
Appalachian Mountains doing a gathering one time near
Murphy, North Carolina. I went to bed and slept through
the night but apparently there was huge
lightning and thunder storms during the night,
which I was unaware of. Then the next morning
everybody was buzzing about how loud the crashes were
of thunder, and jumping two feet out of the bed
in the middle of the night because of this booming
crashing thunder and everything. I was like "hmm,"
because I didn't even hear a thing. We had a long row of
buildings and then my friend Resta, who received all this
music from the Angels, the door opened and she comes out,
and she goes "it was me!" (laughs) (laughter)
Because you just start to see everything--
you don't see the weather as outside of you,
you don't see anything. We've had things over the years,
issues with computers and internet network systems,
and cars, and just everything imaginable. Instead of looking
for the cause in the form, we go to the mind.
We've had some beautiful reflections too of that
shift of mind, where literally the problem
in form disappears. Whatever was broken is fixed!
With out calling a repair man, or whatever. It's just,
-[Voiceover] It's a miracle. -There's a miracle.
There it is, it's there. It's a whole new way of thinking.
Instead of having something wrong with your car
and taking it to a mechanic, going to your inner mechanic.
The Spirit. It starts to become a habit, and you start
to do it with everything. Like Kirsten's saying,
when there's a feeling something's stuck
or not flowing or whatever, then it's a time to go inward.
Back in to that prayer and devotion. What's happening too
is that you lose the investment in outcomes.
For example, with all the traveling and touring we've done,
there was a time when Jackie was handling booking of flights
and frequent flier miles, and so on and so forth.
From a linear perspective you would think,
okay the task of booking a flight is you go on,
you have to find the flight and fill out all the information
and then finally you get to the button where you
push the button and you actually pay for the flight,
and then it will give you sometimes a confirmation
or you get this and that. And then you get to the point
where you go through all of that, Jackie pushes the button,
and nothing happens. Now, typically if you were
looking at it in terms of a linear task
of booking a flight you would say, "well it all went
good until the final step." The ego could interpret
that there's a technical issue with the website,
or something like this. No, no, no no no.
At times Jackie would just step back and go,
"I don't think that flight is to be booked."
You see how different that is, from being
invested in the outcome to being so tuned in
that all things work together for good, and when things
don't work there's a purpose underneath. It's not that
the site's not working. It's being so open to
be guided. And then another flight will come in
and would be better. Or it's delayed until a time when
a decision can be made. Perhaps it's just a timing issue.
There wasn't quite time for that flight to be booked
so the button doesn't work. Those are nuances,
and it actually goes reverse of a lot of ways
of thinking, you can diagnose a problem in the world
and then you go about the problem solving mechanisms
that we've all been taught, based on past learning,
to remedy the problem. We're learning from the Course
that there's no problems in the world. The only problem
is with your connection with the Spirit. If you have
an egoic block, those are getting washed away.
That's the problem. It's an internal problem,
as Jesus says in the Workbook, "one problem, one solution.
Salvation is accomplished." He's not saying that the problem
is outside of yourself. If you're defining the problems as
outside, then you'll define the solutions outside.
The only problem with that is that it just keeps recurring.
You just got a litany of problems, which you can try to
solve as best you can. Sometimes you have to move on
to the next day, and there's carry overs from the
previous day's problems, and you've got a pile of
problems to deal with. That's the human condition.
All of us have gone through that and dealt with that.
But this is about inner listening, and not trying to
force outcomes. Just let the outcome be given.
That's what we say, when Fraces is saying
"whatever you perceive in form will be a reflection
of the mind." Just don't count yourself short.
Don't discount the power of your mind to draw forth
the witnesses, because we are always drawing forth
witnesses. Our mind is extremely powerful.
If you have this dedication and devotion,
whatever you need, if it's a book, a pamphlet,
a Mystical Mind Training experience,
or a Mystical Mind Training partner, or a Skype partner,
or someone that you can talk to, that's pretty much
how our days go. It's quite unconventional too.
Sometimes we marvel at some of these centers,
the way they come up. The people that show up.
The things that are provided and the things that are given.
You could just do a whole movie on this place in Mexico.
All the miracles that have come. How things are handled,
how things come in. It's got more of a fairy tale quality
to how it all happens, because it's all so deeply purposeful,
and nothing is at random, and there's so many
people involved. For us going down to Mexico it seems to be
a different culture than the United States,
different language, different customs. You know,
going out to meet carpenters who come and hand-craft,
from the wood, hand-craft the bunk-beds.
Build them right in the house. We don't really have that
in the United States. You'd go, "hire a carpenter
to come in to your house? Oh! It's going to be
a lot of money." No, this was not. Everything just
trickles in. Even handling finances. We go down there,
we go to a couple banks. No, nothing happens at this bank,
no the computer is down. We get funneled directly where
we're supposed to go with the finances. Everything,
down to the most minute detail, is orchestrated
by the Spirit just because the Spirit is in charge.
There's practical guidance that is given so that we can
flow and be in the joy, and not put so much time and effort
in to "how." Figuring out things in the world.
How do you handle the bedding, how do you handle the food.
Some of you might have heard-- do you have Soup Kitchens
over here? Like, for homeless? Where they just give food
to the poor? We get that. People give us food. Lots of it.
It's amazing. People come from other parts
of the country, they're like, "what?" We're so focused
in what we do that actually, a huge amount of food
gets given to us. It's hard to believe, because we
don't really look like homeless people. (laughter)
-I don't think, I mean don't know what they look like.
(laughter) -We shave, sometimes. It's Jason!
He's had some...bringing on over free food.
No, it comes in all kinds of ways and it's very unexpected
because we're not looking for things in certain ways.
The Spirit brings it in, brings it in. Sarah knows,
she's nodding her head. -[Sarah] Food bank...
-Yeah, food bank. Amazing stories. They come back
from the pantry, "you're not going to believe what we got!"
It comes in all different kinds of ways, this support
of just the Spirit using the symbols of the world,
so you can keep your mind on the peace and the love
and the sharing, extending, the communicating. That's what
we're doing, and then the other stuff-- it's very much like
"seek you first the kingdom of heaven, and all else
will be added unto you." These are practical examples of
it actually works. It's not pie-in-the-sky,
wishful thinking. If you give yourself over fully
to this purpose, then things are taken care of.
I think this question of inner listening, you know
it's most important to come back to that willingness
and the devotion to stay open and keep at it.
Again, like Kirsten was describing, there's been
this seeming break of communication during the
fall from Grace, or during the seeming separation,
and this is a way of reconnecting. You're opening
a channel. You''re opening a channel that was shut off
by the ego. It takes patience, it takes practice,
it takes willingness. We join together so much that
that's part of an acceleration, I think. When you have a
group of people-- you know when you're practicing
for yourself is one thing, when you're doing it
in a relationship, you know how that can be.
When you're doing it in a group you can just even imagine
the fine tuning and the nuances that come in with that.
The ego is terrified of the Holy Spirit. The ego
does not want there to be this re-establishment
of connection, of communication. The ego is
part of that break, and wanting to maintain that break.
Sometimes it can be a timing thing, where you start to get
some feelings, or some signs, or even words or images,
and then it seems to take a while. It can almost be
a premonition of something that's to come,
but it's just not now. Not yet. And so you develop
patience, infinite patience. I think the more fine tuned
you get, you also are aware that there are no accidents,
so when doorways seem to be closed, or things seem
to be locked, or things seem to be what the world would call
"blocked," you start to have a whole different perception
of that. It would be like imagine you were some water
coming down a mountain, and then you encountered
some rocks and boulders along the way, and the water just
splashed and rolled around the boulder. It didn't hit
the boulder and go "mm. Was I not listening," (laughs)
"when I came to this boulder?" (laughter)
-"Was I off in my hearing of Spirit?" No, it just flows!
You notice how it never gets blocked. It flows around.
Even if it gets dammed up, lets say it comes to a valley
and it comes down, and it goes "oh," and it just
sits there, for centuries, (laughs) as a pond.
It doesn't go, "was I not hearing right, that this pond
or this valley-- I would hit this valley?" (laughter)
-No, it just goes in, and sits in the pond. You see?
That's how you have to do. You have to be like a twig
in the river. The river will go here and there,
and the twig will bounce around, and go where it goes.
You have no investment in the form. You're invested
in the peace of mind. So you can be a happy twig,
going babbling down the river, you know?
Even if you go over the waterfalls, "wee!" (laughter)
-You might have some fun experiences being a twig,
but you don't really have to try to figure it out.
The thing you want to pay attention to is,
how do you feel? That's the most important thing always,
is how you feel. That's what the lesson really is,
it's a lesson in the Beatitudes.
(light piano music)