I remember when I was going around speaking a lot of Course groups and everything like this
I was so excited about the whole book of A Course in Miracles and a lot of times some of the greatest
epiphanies that I had was when I got to
chapter, you know, thirty one. It was like at the very very very end of the text;
self-concept versus capital Self. I was like
talking in Course groups, like that's it! I mean, that's the whole thing! That's it. I was like saying leave it all behind
You know
Sell your possessions, come, be and live as I live and I sounded a lot like
St. Francis at these Course groups and people were like - what chapter is that in!
It's like no, it's at the end of the book, you know at the end of the text.
I was so euphoric that every time
I'd ever been defensive that we were talking about defensiveness any time I was defensive
He says whenever you feel the need to be defensive about anything, you have identified yourself with an illusion.
And so I was like, WOW!
So this whole self concept of David; my family, my city, my country, my career, my profession, my
education, I was just like...
Hallelujah, that's all
this concept that the ego made up and it's not who I am at all.
So after ten years of University and spending all this time in academia and grad school,
I just chucked it all, I just dropped it.
I was like, if that's what this whole things about is dropping the self-concept so I can know myself as Christ,
you know, and being of good cheer and really overcoming the ego in the world then I said this is fantastic!
I'm so glad to get to the root of it .
And the thing about it is,
when you want, you know that old thing in the course about would you rather be right or happy?
I asked Jesus one time I said
but tell me about this right or happy
Would you rather be right or happy. He said well what it means is
would you rather be right about how the ego set up this whole
linear
construct of a cosmos. Would you rather be right about that?
Or would you rather be happy?
It wasn't about opinions. It wasn't about specific little things in my life and getting the facts
right and everything. He was saying would you rather be right about the way the ego set up the whole world or
Happy to see that none of it means anything and to chuck the whole thing.
So as soon as I got down to that, I'm like
Okay, I'll go for chuck the whole thing. Now I don't know how to do that,
so I'm going to need a lot of guidance to chuck the whole thing.
But the best part is all these skills and abilities that were developed as part of that
self-concept can still be given over to the Holy Spirit for speaking, for sharing, for communicating.
Not for trying to build something in the world, or attain something in the world ,or achieve something,
but more like Buddha and Jesus talked about emptying the mind. It just takes willingness to
listen and follow, but the context of listening and following is
letting go. And I just see in my life,
I see so many witnesses of people that are so willing to
follow the Spirit to go wherever they're guided to go, to pour their heart and soul into this and to give it all
over to Spirit. And then they will tell you they do have these beautiful shifts in the way
they see the world, but it's not from kind of an intellectual standpoint or an
intellectual understanding of the Course. It's from the actual
diving in and going on the adventure and letting the Spirit, you know, take away
literally the self-concept investment that was there
You