So for myself, having gone through all that university and everything, and taken psychology
and studied graduate school psychology and so on and so forth, I kind of, I like graphics and
I like to be shown things, I like diagrams. So because I like that kind of stuff, when I made
contact with Jesus I actually asked Jesus, I said, “You know, I'm kinda fascinated with the mind
– not so much the brain, but I really would like to know how my mind works. Could you give me a map
of my mind, because it's pretty difficult here navigating through these daily experiences where
I get angry and upset and I have these intense emotions and then my behavior, I want to act out
those intense emotions.” And I said, “Can you give me a map of the mind?” And He said, “Sure”. So
he had me sit down and draw all these concentric circles and He was saying, “OK, the outside layer
there in this map of the mind is your perceptual realm. This is what you perceive as the gross
perceptual world that you see and the cosmos, seemingly through the five senses – it's really in
your mind but it seems like it's through the five senses. It's projected out from your consciousness
and it's not like the world is outside of you, it's just the world is projected so it seems
to be, through the trick of the ego that it's external to your mind but it's not external to
your mind. And then” He said, “the outer layer is perception and then right underneath...” You know
I talked this morning about the ring of fear? “The emotional ring is right under the perceptual ring.
And these two rings are so close to each other that that's where it seems like the manipulation
can occur - where you start to feel these intense emotions. And then you watch your behavior. You're
tempted to act them out. You may get so upset in interpersonal relationships that you just feel
furious. You may sometimes feel a murderous rage coming up. You may be able to control it and not
act out the murderous rage, but you do think thoughts like, I could just kill them. Has
anybody not gone through these murderous thoughts coming up at some point or another in your life?
That outer ring of perception is so close to the emotions that are underneath that it seems like
with most marketing, parents use it to influence their children's behavior – the children go
through the terrible twos and then they go through childhood and then they get to be teenagers and
then parents might use some wording to control behavior, like, “My way or the highway. This is
my house and I make the rules in my house. If you live under my house, you live by my rules.” And
it doesn't matter whether it's corporations like Facebook Analytica or it seems to be...
just parents, church leaders, politicians,
interpersonal relationships. That's what co-dependency is about. Co-dependency is about
using control and manipulation to bring about certain behaviors and actions. So when I studied
psychology I knew these things, but it took the master psychologist to kind of lay it out for me
like, Well here's your perceptions of what's happening, your behavior, your actions, the body
is all out in that outer ring and then the ring of fear, the emotional ring is right underneath that.
And even your pseudo-emotions of love, like romantic love and attraction and all those things,
those perceptions and those emotions are so close together that it seems like that's where a lot of
what we would call manipulation and abuse occur. But as I said earlier today, Jesus says, “You
have not gone back far enough” He didn't stop His map with those two outer layers - levels of mind.
“Oh no,” He said, “There's something under those emotions. There's something under your emotions
that's causing your emotions.” I was like, “Fascinating! That's fascinating!” Psychology,
all this undergrad and grad, OOO, Jesus, OOO, this is much better than Freud. Tell me what's,
I need to know what's underneath those perceptions and those emotions. Because those emotions seem to
dictate those perceptions.” In fact Jesus even says that in the Course.
He says, “You will look upon that which you feel within. And if you have hatred in your mind,
you're going to see a very fearful world”… based on that hatred. As long as you still
have hatred in your mind, you're going to perceive a world because that fear, that hatred, that anger
determines the perception. You will perceive that. But underneath the emotional ring
is cognition – it's your thoughts. Fascinating! So cognition, thoughts, determine emotions.
That must mean that if I have egoic, if I have attack thoughts, I'll call them, or judgments,
that must be generating the anger, generating the fear, generating the shame, generating the
guilt. It's the thoughts. It's the thoughts that generate the emotions, it's the emotions that
generate the perceptions. OK now we're getting somewhere. The master psychologist, He said,
“But there's something underneath your thoughts.” OOO, I need to know about that. Let's go down.
Let's get back far enough. Let's go deep enough with this. Let's do like the ancient Greeks,
let's start questioning everything. Let's get into philosophy. Let's get into the depth using Jesus
Christ as the teacher, what is underneath those thoughts? “Your beliefs”, He said,
“Your beliefs generate those thoughts.” OK, wow, that means I gotta go way down there.
Because He's saying that when you have an assumption that you will not
question in your mind it turns into an unconscious belief.
That which you do not question in your mind is unconscious belief, which is dictating your
thoughts, your emotions, and your perceptions. So that's why Jesus says in A Course in Miracles, “To
learn this Course requires willingness to question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept
hidden or it will obscure your learning.” That means question everything. And how would you do
that except under the guidance of Jesus and the Holy Spirit taking you on that journey,
going deeper deeper inward, inward. The truth is inward, the truth is inward underneath those
beliefs. Is there anything deeper than the beliefs? Jesus said, “Yes.” Oh, thank God,
because the ego is a belief and there better be something underneath that ego or we're in shit.
We're in eternal damnation if there's nothing underneath
the beliefs. But there is. He said, “Your desire.Your desire is under your beliefs.
Your desire. You made the ego by believing in it and you can dispel it by withdrawing your
belief from it.” How do I withdraw my belief from the ego? How do I unplug this death wish?
He says, in the Course, He says, “Truth will be returned to you by your desire as it was lost
by your desire for something else.” Yes! Desire the truth and the truth shall set you free.
Desire happiness, desire joy, desire Divine Love,
desire true freedom by desiring it. As soon as I got that map of the mind, I like, OK then,
let's get busy here. Let's go deep diving. Let's do some deep diving into the mind. How am I going
to get in touch with these unconscious beliefs? I'm not even aware of my thoughts. How can I get
down underneath my thoughts? He said, “Aw, I'll help you. I'll take you to the movies,
like this. I'll take you to the movies. You like music? Aw, we'll do some playing a lot
of music to help you bring up those emotions, get in touch with what's underneath there.”
He's like, I know how to get down there. I did it. I've been through this before.
I've done this. I know you can transcend it. So, in answer to your question about
manipulation is that's exactly what A Course in Miracles is for. Yes, the roots of the belief in
manipulation run deep. Yes, the roots of abuse, the belief in abuse run deep.
The belief that you can be unfairly treated runs deep. The belief that you or anyone
can be unfairly treated runs very very deep. And He'll throw in little ditties in there. He'll say,
“Beware of the temptation to believe that you can be unfairly treated.”
Now it's a temptation, it's just an ego temptation. And what did Jesus do? He transcended
everything. He transcended the ego and the entire ego belief system to express and extend
the living experience of the Kingdom of Heaven within. And He taught us it wasn't like an
earthly kingdom, it was a spiritual kingdom and that we could reach it as He reached it. In fact
it is inevitable. Jesus was just the first to wake up from this dream of scarcity, shame, pain, lack,
death, this dark world, dark forces, that Jesus was just the first. And He's given us a road map.
That's what A Course in Miracles is, it's a road map. It's like, Uh Oh, Uh Oh, road map.
I've done a pretty good job of hiding myself for millenium and now He's gotta put a road map
out there on how to transcend me...
the ego and time and space. And that's what Jesus was doing for us. It's offering a way out.