Editor's note: This transcript has been lightly edited to bring clarification to certain points of the dialogue and for easier readability. For this reason, it does not match the corresponding audio mp3 word-for-word. However, the overall content and the expressed ideas remain unchanged.

Speaker: When the mind became invested in form it forgot about the Mind. The deceived mind has forgotten that it is a Mind. We go to school and we learn about history and about bodies and in health class we learn about anatomy. In psychology there are the old behaviorism trends; if you can’t see it, if you can’t measure it then it doesn’t exist. Science is still very much based on empirical evidence in the world. It takes a while for the mind to first of all be convinced that it is a mind or has a mind and then to figure out how does this mind work. I mean that in a general sense, it doesn’t really help to study the ego. A lot of psychology kind of goes around in circles when you end up studying the psychosis or the DSM3, it has all these categories and labels for all these so called sicknesses. Jesus says the ego literally loves studying itself. When I talk about studying the Mind I’m not talking about that. But it’s learning the laws of Mind as God created it and learning the twisted ones that the ego has. The most fundamental law of Mind, in the early text Jesus says, is what you extend you are. That’s how the law is in heaven. God extended himself and that’s how the Son was born. The Son was an idea in the Mind of God. It’s this sense of creation, of expansion, of increase and yet it doesn’t have any time involved in it. Try to figure that one out! How can you have increase without the concept of quantity?

But, what the ego does in this world with that same law, what you extend you are, through the ego’s filter becomes what you project you will believe, and so the world is projected and the body is projected and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Now that the mind has held on to these attack thoughts, they have to be projected. There is no way you can hold onto attack thoughts in the mind. Here’s the Holy Spirit and here’s the ego oh, got to project them! and that’s what the dynamic of projection is. That’s why you get angry at people. I don’t want to look at the decision I’m making. I don’t want to look at anger as my decision. I want to be justified in saying this person obviously did this, don’t you think? And I’m not sure so I’m going to get six or seven people to agree with me. Really, it was this person’s fault. They have a very disagreeable personality. Now you’ve got a good reason to be upset. You see how insidiously this ego works, it tries to get allies immediately. Notice the first thing that you always do is the perceptual judgment about the situation involving this person. When you really look at it, Jesus is telling us your Spirit, you are eternal, you are changeless, you are infinite, you are magnitude, you are powerful! This contradicts the experience in the world of being the weak little frail person battling against big economic political forces, diseases. There’s two different ways of seeing but one of them has to be right. Jesus is saying only one of them is true, it’s the magnitude.

But, ultimately it comes down to this sense of personhood. What I’ve noticed is that the self concept involves, I’m an important person and you’re an other. You’re a real different person than I am. It’s what Krishnamurti and a lot of the mystics have called the subject/object split which of course is two instead of just complete unity and oneness, the ego with the optical illusion of the world, breaks it up into a subject/object split and who is the subject? That’s me the person, the personality, and who is the object? That is any other person or the world. You can be the object.
Participant1: Thanks, I wanted to be!

Speaker: So we have subject Speaker and object…

Participant: Jean!

(Laughter)

Speaker: And the subject has his own history. Not only that but we have different self concepts and we’ve got different beliefs you believe what!? Look at marriages. You get married and then things like do you open the packages on Christmas day or Christmas Eve come u. Big issues start to surface. (laughter) My mom always taught me this was the way and you’re saying what!? I’m drawing the line here! And then you get into this thing of compromise. I always thought compromise was a good thing. I grew up and compromise was a good thing. The Course is saying forget compromise. There is a way of looking at the world and tuning into the Holy Spirit where everyone gains. Compromise is I’ll give a little, you give a little. We’ll mediate. We’ll work this issue out in form. We’ll open them on Christmas Eve this year but next year I’ll make a bargain with you. The Course says there is a way of training our mind to literally look at the world and forget compromise. Each decision that we make will be one in which the entire Sonship will benefit.

This is an extraordinary idea because if we believe that we’re this little person then we’re always gauging our decisions, What will my boss think? What will my husband or wife think? We end up; you know the old thing about making lists and putting the pro’s on one side and the cons on the other? The Course is giving us a radical new way and saying that every decision you make is for the whole Sonship, that you are literally choosing between the ego and the Holy Spirit every instant. But you don’t see it that way. Here’s the ego and the Holy Spirit in the mind. This is an intolerable situation. The mind can’t stand that. It’s intolerable so it starts stacking on beliefs on top of that. Beliefs in the world to cover over that this is what’s going on in the mind.

Basically here comes the miracle impulse, very powerful, the Holy Spirit has shooting up through the mind but it has to come through all these nooks and crannies and it comes out ‘boom!’ on the surface. On the surface it’s, I’m a person and I’m deciding to buy a car. I just decided to buy a Chrysler. So here we go, our miracle impulse has come through all these layers and levels of form and now, I’m a person buying a car! Now, do I want a red Chrysler or a green Chrysler? ‘Whew, gosh…tough decision; I’ve got to debate on this one. What color should it be?’ Now here Jesus is saying, ‘You’re choosing between two illusions. You’re straining. Oh, do you want the green car or do you want the red car.’ What he’s basically saying is a long as you perceive yourself as a person in the world then you perceive that your choice is in the world that I’m a person in the world and I’ve got to choose between circumstances. I’ve got to choose where to live, where to work and who am I going to live with and what time it is and where do I have to go; and on and on making choices. All Jesus is saying is that the real choice is simply between the ego and the Holy Spirit and its right down here. It’s way down here in your mind. You’ve got to question all these silly beliefs that you’ve got blocking the real choice. Jesus says bring the problem back to the solution. Bring the problem back from perceiving it to be a problem between the red car and the green car that you’re debating over to between the ego and the Holy Spirit. So, he helps us go through and peel the layers of the onion to go deeper and deeper down to see that this is the only decision. Once you’ve peeled all the layers, once you go all the way down to the bottom and you see that the problem wasn’t out in the world, the problem wasn’t between the cars, the problem wasn’t my boyfriend or my girlfriend, the problem wasn’t I lost my job. When I’ve gone beyond all these beliefs, what I’m looking on now. Its the ego and the Holy Spirit. This is no choice! This is no choice at all! Bing! Wake up!

But, you see why going down through the beliefs is so important. You’ve got to get down with the Holy Spirit into the ego. That’s why the section on rules for decision is so helpful. Just think for yourself. When you wake up in the morning, ‘I want to have a happy day. I want happiness and peace more than anything else.’ And if you hold on to that idea, you really hold onto that, you just tenaciously hold onto it, I want Peace of God more than anything else, that’s the day that will be given you. You will have a perfectly happy peaceful day. But, when alternatives start to enter your mind, it’s like Well, I’m having a peaceful day but I’ve got to get be at this important business meeting and this train is in front of me! I’m going to lose my job! Here we go. I’m back into the beliefs again and that just doesn’t cut the mustard. This peace of God stuff is good for awhile but this is the real stuff. This is a train! I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me. I’m reading meaning into this. This is a train. It’s going to hold me up. I’m going to be late. I’m going to lose my job. There go all the fear thoughts. So, what a tool we have to help cut through all these beliefs or help dissolve all these beliefs. Time is down there at the bottom. Sometimes it’s frustrating for people when they read in the Course that all it takes is one instant, You’ve got to be kidding me! Just one instant; in one instant I could just choose to accept my perfection as God created me? Yeah but when you believe in time, space and matter and the world and everything the world’s built on, that’s when it seems to take time to work things out. It would be a very short little book if you opened up the book and it said, “God is.” That’s a fact. But, I need help where I believe I am so Jesus wrote the Course with all these layers and different levels, so that wherever you believe you are you can grab onto something. It’s like a stepping stone. Then you could say, ‘Yeah, this idea resonates with me. I’ll put my foot on that and I’ll anchor on that for awhile and you feel like maybe there’s something more and then something else jumps out at you and you’ve read the same paragraph maybe for two years and all of a sudden ‘boom!’ another one. You get to step on another step and then you don’t need that other one below now. It’s like a ladder. He’s given us in the Course in Miracles, a ladder. How do we get out of here? We climb one rung at a time! Metaphysically it never happened, it’s a bad dream. That’s not where my experience is. Give me a rung down here that I can stand on, and they just go deeper and deeper and ultimately the higher rungs are the subject/object split.

Then I start to give up my investments in personhood. What are my investments in personhood? If I believe I’m a man and I go into a discussion and a group of woman start saying, Oh, men this and men that… Here they come, the defenses. You’re talking about me, because you see the ‘me’ as identified as being a man. When you start to look at the self concept stuff it’s this construct that we’ve made up and whatever it is that we’re valuing, whatever it is we’ll defend. We’re still identifying with an illusion of our self that is always tied into form, and the Course is nothing different than just being able to say, it was great when I could watch a Red’s game finally and sit down and try to find the divine perfection when the Red’s were playing the Dodger’s. I was really into tennis. Years ago, I would watch .Wimbledon. I would root so hard for Jimmie Connors that I would sweat for like five hours, against Bjorn Borg. I would probably lose more liquid than Jimmie Connors lost because I was pulling for him so hard on each point. It was the same thing. It was like a real investment. My identity was tied up in how Jimmie Connors career was or Pete Rose or so on. You can start to see how your emotions hinge on the external outcome. Connors pulls it out in the 5th set. Yes! I’m going to be happy for a week. But, then the next match, and it goes on and on and on.

Participant: It’s like from insanity to sanity. It’s like just that second, that one instant. I guess even in making a decision between the Holy Spirit and the ego. It all is right in that second, and to me that is where I feel the most confusion.

Speaker: It’s in the mind training. I would say that in order to really get clear one would have to really go through the false beliefs to get down to that instant that we’re talking about where the decision is seen as between the ego and the Holy Spirit. But, in the mind, it’s all jumbled up. It’s like the mind seems to be chattering constantly and the reaction is, Watch my thoughts?! Gee!! It seems like a real big job. Giving is a good topic area to go into. When you’re bound to form, then a lot of your ideas about giving have to do with giving in certain ways, whether its giving through form gifts or giving time or how to give. The Course says what we give we receive for ourselves, and that truly the only gift that we give is at a thought level. Ideas are strengthened as they are given away. It’s by giving those thoughts away that you can get away from this belief in loss because I think a lot of co-dependency and enabling beneath it, is still the bargain. It’s like I give so much. I give so much until I’m burnt out, but can that really be giving if we feel burnt out?

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