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.

David: The decision to get out of debt in a worldly sense is a decision within the unholy instant. You have to really begin to be able to start to take a look at the whole idea of debt and to start to come into the mystical place of seeing where the whole idea of debt becomes just as funny as “worldly justice”. First you believe that there's fairness and justice in the world, then you get deeper into the Course and you start to say Wait a minute! What is this concept of fairness and justice? You start out that way with debt as well and then as you go deeper and deeper you have to start to see This is kind of funny. I have to believe in the laws of economics before I can believe in debt. I have to believe in exchange and reciprocity before I can believe in debt. It would make no sense to talk about debt if I didn’t believe in the laws of economics and the laws of reciprocity and exchange.

So the stepping stone is: you seem to pay off your debts in form and that’s just the beginning. To really question as we’re talking about questioning really deeply, to question the laws of economics and the laws of reciprocity and exchange, that’s just like the surface where debts seem to get paid off. But then you've got to do the real work [laughing] you've got to question the reality of debts.

If you question the reality debts and you question the reality of reciprocity I will guarantee you get back to look at personhood. You know that you're going to come back around to that again, because there certainly aren't any debts or reciprocity in Heaven. And there aren't even any debts and reciprocity in the real world much less Heaven and you’ve got to go through the real world to get to Heaven.

Yes, it seems simple; it seems like we keep talking about the same things, we seem to keep coming at it from all these different angles, but that’s the way the process seems to go until you can just make the leap.

The paying off of debts and the parting of ways that seems to take place in relationships of this world is just a symbolic representation on the screen of retracing the mind; of the mind going back and retracing its steps. All these false beliefs and false decisions that it has made, that it has tacked on at a mind level has been out-pictured in this, Oh I'm a person and I have debts and I have these things and I have obligations and I have responsibilities and I have duties… That’s all how it looks out there on the screen and as you start to retrace these decisions it seems like the screen will change, Oh getting a little more simpler, seems like I don’t have these things that I once had… but really those are all just interpretations that are still being made on the screen.

One could say I am completely free; I have nobody counting on me anymore in relationships. I have no more bills to pay, I have cleaned my act up, I have none of this, I have none of this… And where are you? Have you reached an enlightened state if you haven't come to understand that cause and effect are simultaneous, that there's no sequential time? That there isn’t any sequencing of events… if you still have judgments and you think you’ve given up all these things, then where are you? You're still nowhere. Or you’re still having the illusion of being in the world.

So it’s like when we say take care of business, clear up debts and so on and so forth, on the screen, that’s just symbolic of loosening.

Friend: Pulling back.

David: Pulling back in your mind, retracing the steps that you seem to have taken that seem to have got you as being a body out there in the world. And if the retracing seems painful at times, don’t be fooled by that voice. There seems to be some uneasiness, as Jesus says in the Self-Concept versus Self section. He talks about the uneasiness that seems to be introduced…

"A concept of the self is meaningless, for no one here can see what it is for, and therefore cannot picture what it is. Yet is all learning that the world directs begun and ended with the single aim of teaching you this concept of yourself, that you will choose to follow this world's laws, and never seek to go beyond its roads nor realize the way you see yourself."

We need the Holy Spirit!

"Now must the Holy Spirit find a way to help you see this concept of the self must be undone, if any peace of mind is to be given you. Nor can it be unlearned except by lessons aimed to teach that you are something else. For otherwise, you would be asked to make exchange of what you now believe for total loss of self, and greater terror would arise in you. Thus are the Holy Spirit's lesson plans arranged in easy steps, that though there be some lack of ease at times and some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned, but just a re-translation of what seems to be the evidence on its behalf."

See, when I talk about the world as just the means and the world is just what you see, that is what is being retranslated, "…but just a re-translation of what seems to be the evidence on its behalf."

As long as the mind believes in separation what it will see in the world will be evidence on behalf of separation. And the only way out of this seemingly terrifying situation is to re-perceive the world, or to have the perception of the world retranslated so that mind no longer looks for witnesses of pain and suffering and hurt but it looks for other witnesses because it holds onto another purpose.

"…though there be some lack of ease at times and some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned, but just a re-translation…"

Another line from the Psychotherapy Pamphlet that’s been really helpful to me is that “Resistance is the ego’s definition of progress and growth.” When you seem to be having difficulty with some of these ideas that were going into that’s just the egos interpretation of progress and growth. Progress and growth so to speak is happening. The movement is taking place, the movement of the Kingdom, the movement of Christ and don’t be alarmed you’re right on schedule you're right where you need to be. Don’t get hung up in the interpretations, the ego’s interpretations of events.

Friend: You're right where you need to be.

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