No, you have to sit and wait a half hour until I notice you.
You notice me...I always notice you, come on.
Something that you said to Deejay sparked a thought in my mind,
which was when you said that Jesus said—would say to you,
"Don't you want to feel better?" regardless of what it's about.
And I realized I feel so guilty and so evil
that I don't deserve to feel better; I mean, really, really.
Because intellectually I get this whole thing,
but not only do I feel so guilty,
if I can get by that and I do forgive it, I'm going to be outta here!
So I don't know which is worse...
the guilt that underlies it or the fear of disappearing.
It's like it feels hopeless. What do I do?
I mean I keep coming here and coming.
I know, give up. Go back to Brooklyn.
There's gotta be a way out.
Has to be another answer, right?
All right, let me answer the second part of your question first.
It is not true that if you follow this course and forgive, you're outta here.
What you'll be out of will be your anger, your guilt, your depression,
your sadness, your suffering, your pain, your hopelessness, your despair,
your desolation, on and on and on; that's what you'll be out of.
It's only at the very, very end of the journey
that the self that you identify with goes poof!
That's at the very end, and that only happens when you let it go.
Until that point, what characterizes our journey
is that we still retain this identity,
because we do cling to it, but this identity now becomes
more and more cleansed of all the stuff we put on it.
Again, the anger, the fear, the anxiety, the guilt, the despair, etcetera.
So that's the first thing. You just won't go poof.
What will happen is that you will still remain in this world,
in this body with your own identity, living in your own house,
driving your own car, having your own friends, but you'll be happier.
Not happier because your ego is getting its needs met,
but being happier because you're carrying around less and less of a burden of guilt.
I forgot the first part of your question.
I forgot the first part too. It's just so thick and intense that—
I remember the first part of the question. Okay.
It's just I'm... Something to do with intenseness and the... and the thickness, right.
If you remember what I said earlier in the workshop,
that we don't have even a concept that could begin to embrace
the horror and the enormity of guilt and self-hatred,
and part and parcel of that guilt is the thought,
which you articulated in the first part of your question,
that, "I don't deserve to be happy."
And as long as you are in this world,
identified with being in this world as a body
you are identifying with guilt, because guilt is what sets this whole thing going.
And as long as there is guilt
then you must believe you do not deserve to be happy
and, again, that's what reinforces that strange notion of sacrifice;
that sacrifice is something good.
That I believe if I am going to be happy, I have to pay for it.
I have to work hard all my life so I could then retire,
and then the market crashes and I lose all my money anyway
and that's what I have coming to me because I'm really not a good person.
That's the way everybody interprets everything,
but you cannot feel guilt--and you know you feel guilt if you think you're here--
so you cannot feel guilt without also believing,
"I deserve to be punished. I do not deserve to be happy. I do not deserve to be peaceful,"
which means when things don't go your way externally
your ego jumps right in and says,
"Ah, you see? I told you. Nothing will ever work out for you because..."
and it may list a whole list of behavioral things, or personality things
why they don't work out, but underlying it is the unconscious thought
that says they will never work out because God will never let you be happy.
And underlying that, or concomitant with that, is the thought that says,
"I will never let myself be happy,"
because if God finds me and sees that I'm happy
after what I did to Him, He's going to really zero in on me
and no matter how long my list is of all the evil perpetrated on me,
He won't pay any attention to it because He'll be so angry
that, here I am, I stole from Him and I'm literally, you know,
the harder the land, and I'm so happy
that there's no hope for me.
Therefore I will show Him if and when He shows up
that I'm miserable. I don't deserve to have a new car,
and if I do I'm going to crack it up.
I don't deserve to have a healthy body, and if I do I'll get sick.
I don't deserve to have a lot of money; if I do I'll lose it.
I don't deserve to have people around me who love me
because if I do then terrible things going to happen,
therefore I'll see to it that everybody leaves me and I'll be rejected and abandoned.
And I'll luxuriate in that because in my magically-insane mind
I think I'm showing God He doesn't have to punish me
because I've already done it.
And... All right, now you get it? Okay... Very good... This is on tape now so you could have it.
The only way out of it is to draw a box around the whole thought system,
the entire thought system I just talked about,
and everybody feels and say, "This is a complete thought system,
and within that thought system everything
I have now expressed and always feel is valid."
However, this whole thought system that I've drawn a box around
is a defense against another thought system,
and that's the thought system I'm afraid of.
And at least now, if I could begin to do that I now have a way—
a context—in which I could put all of this guilt and all of this misery,
and all of this thinking that I don't deserve to be happy,
because now I could begin to understand this whole thing
is a defense against something that I'm even more afraid of.
And even if I'm not aware of that
or I'm intellectually aware of it but I don't feel it,
I at least can become aware that there is literally a method in my madness,
and this thought system I have is mad.
It's miserable; it doesn't work, and yet I keep doing it.
But if I could at least begin to think that the whole ego thought system
is a defense against another thought system,
and the fact that it's a defense against another thought system
means there must be another thought system there.
That at least gives me the beginning,
or the beginning glimmerings of hope,
and that's the only way out of this.
You cannot get help within the system.
So when Jesus says the ego thought system is fool-proof,
that's what he means. Within this box
around the thought system of the ego, which is the thought system of the world,
there is no hope; it's foolproof. You can't break it.
It begins with guilt and evil and ends with guilt and evil,
and all along the way there's misery and pain and suffering and death.
But, as Jesus then says, but that thought system is not God-proof,
because there is a thought system that reflects the Love of God that's also there.
And so one could say that the purpose of this course
is to have us become aware, number one,
of the enormity and the awfulness of the ego thought system,
but then understand that that is a defense
against our right-minded thought system,
and that there is love and there is light within our minds
just as there is a thought of evil, darkness, and sin.
And at least now when I begin to get overwhelmed by these feelings I could say—
and it may begin as an intellectual experience
but then it will generalize in time, I could begin to say,
"But this is a defense. I'm more afraid of losing myself.
I'm more afraid of knowing who would I be
without my anger, without my victimization."
Everyone knows the line, but let me read it to you,
at the end of "Self-Concept vs. Self" near the end of the text.
"There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:
I do not know the thing I am,
and therefore do not know what I am doing,
where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself."
When I'm angry, when I'm depressed, when I'm sick,
when I'm victimized, when I'm abused, humiliated, abandoned,
rejected, betrayed, I know who I am.
I am this innocent victim of all the evil out there.
I know who I am. Everything is clear to me. Makes me miserable
but I know who I am, and that's why there's no statement
that the world is more afraid to hear than that.
Yet once we could say that statement, Jesus goes on,
"Yet in this learning is salvation born;"
learning that I'm not this victimized, this innocent victim,
this figure in a dream of hate and evil.
"And What you are," with a capital W--your true Self--"What you are will tell you of Itself."
In other words, I make room for this Self to speak to me
by getting this other—this whole wrong-minded box out of the way.
And what helps me along the way
of removing this wrong-minded box is looking at it.
But it must be looked at, as I was saying a moment ago, it must be looked at
not only for what it is in terms of the contents of the box,
but it must be looked at for its purpose, to conceal the right-minded box,
which is where the Love of God is and where that light shines.