(light piano music)
-Sickness. There's a reference in the Workbook
where it's like, the mind really chooses and selects
the symptoms of the body. It literally selects them.
They are decisions, and they're selected,
and then there's a quick forgetting, he calls it.
Almost like a magic wand that just covers it over.
A quick forgetting, he calls it. In which then
the cause is seen to be outside. Or if not actually seen
as outside, there's a search that begins
as if the mind didn't select the symptoms
in the first place. It selects the symptoms for the body,
it literally picks them out. Cancer, heart disease,
whatever (snaps), and then it's so powerful
it quickly forgets what it's done and it looks
for the source of the cancer, or it will get a diagnosis
from a doctor, maybe get a second opinion,
maybe get a third opinion. Talk about playing pretend,
like you don't know what's going on. To select the symptoms
and then go hopping around, looking to be told
what it is, and not only what it is, but where it came from.
You know, "oh, I was exposed to too many UV rays
and it's probably from the ultra violet rays" or,
"I was exposed to radiation." Or it could could be to diet,
"well, look at the diet I've been eating. I really wasn't
eating well, I should expect this kind of diagnosis
after that." You see how it's pushing, pushing.
It's so tricky. The mind is so powerful that
it's convincing itself. The ego is always trying to push
it out on to other things, other people,
and even though it's selected the symptom very specifically
it totally covers that over. It doesn't let that come
in to awareness -- just pushes it out of awareness --
to play this game of being the victim. I think that's what
you're describing. It's very common in the sense that
there's a huge resistance to authority, but under all
the authority problem is the beliefs that you can
author yourself, you can author yourself any way
you wish to be instead of accepting yourself
as God authored you in Spirit. So then that authorship,
authority issue gets played out as if other people
are telling you what to do. "Well, I was a child
and my parents were a lot bigger than me,
and they told me I had to do all these things," or,
"my siblings, I was the youngest of the siblings
and I was forced to do these things." It's quite a
contrived set-up, to not take responsibility for everything.
Just to be at the mercy of external characters.
It's very common on the spiritual journey, too, because
all this talk of "trust, and trust and trust" and initially
there seems to be a trust in people, reflected in
the Workbook Lesson "I trust my brothers who are one with me."
That trust has to transfer, to go much beyond the idea
of trusting a person, because in the end
you can't trust the flesh. If you're being guided to let go
of all perceptions of the world you're going to have
an intuitive voice that takes you beyond trusting in
men and women, or people, or even spiritual leaders.
You can't stop there. You can't end there.
The world is not going to disappear while you're still
relying on these characters. You have to get to a point
where you trust the Spirit within you so strong
that you see the meaninglessness of all the characters.
Then you know beyond a shadow of a doubt who you are.
And then you don't have a need from the world any more,
or learning or unlearning, it just disappears.
That's very common, the idea there can be
a shared experience of guidance, and then,
like Kirsten said, the mind forgets what it heard,
what it felt, and then it flips it around
to another victim story. Just turns it in to
one more victim story, like "I shouldn't have listened."
It will just reverse the whole process.
(light piano music)