When you said you forgive yourself, the "you" you talked about
this morning and last week, in the Course, we feel he's talking to us
and we feel special. We feel Jesus is talking to us.
Is that kind of correct in a sense? Yes, yes
Okay. And so, but that "you" cannot see anybody sinless or that "you" cannot forgive.
Is that true? That's correct.
So we have to train ourselves that when we feel that dis-ease or anxious,
to ask Jesus to come in and help us make a new decision
or see it differently? Is that . . . ?
Yeah. Can I just kind of tweak it a little bit? Please.
Don't ask him to come to help you change your mind.
Ask yourself to come to where he is.
Okay.
The more you, as I've said many other times, many of you have heard me say,
that if you could have an image in your mind of sitting in a theater,
next to Jesus, and you're looking at a play,
so Shakespeare's play, the play that he says is our life,
and see yourself as the hero of that play, and watch yourself on the stage
go through your day. Think about your past days and past years
and look at what you're doing now, and watch yourself,
try to cultivate the attitude of stepping back -- which again, is the real meaning
of asking Jesus for help, stepping back with him and watch yourself do your thing.
Watch yourself get up in the morning, watch yourself get dressed,
have breakfast, go to work, watch yourself at work, watch yourself interact with people.
If you're living with someone, watch yourself interact with the person whom you're living with.
Just watch yourself, as you're going through your day
doing what normal people do, being happy, being sad, being angry,
being excited, being peaceful, being forgiving, being loving, being unkind.
Just watch yourself do it. And the reason that's so important
is that the "you" that's watching Steve on the stage
is not the "you" that's on the stage.
So that will help you begin to dislodge your identification with the self that's the body.
So the line I quoted earlier that "The miracle looks on devastation."
So the miracle is you sitting in the theater with Jesus,
looking on the devastation of your life.
And the "you" that's sitting in the audience with Jesus watching
what's going on is the decision maker.
And when you sit with Jesus, you become an observer.
The right-minded decision maker is an observer, because it observes the ego in action.
So watch yourself in the theater with Jesus looking, the miracle looks on devastation,
the devastation that's your life, and reminds itself,
which is what sitting with Jesus means, reminds itself that what you're seeing up there is false.
That's what that line is. That's a wonderful line.
Everybody should put that line on their bathroom mirrors and their rear view mirrors
and their refrigerators and their wallets and their credit cards
because that's what will help put into a meaningful perspective
what your life is all about.
It's looking on devastation and reminding yourself that what you see is false.
It may seem very real as bodies do. But that doesn't make it real.
The fact that it seems real doesn't make it real.
All you need as proof of that is your experience at night when you dream.
When you dream at night, and we all dream at night, while you're asleep dreaming,
what you dream seems so real and so palpable. You could touch it.
And it's only when you awaken and you remember this was just a dream,
then it begins to fade and you realize it was nothing; nothing happened.
But while you are asleep, it seems, it feels, very real.
So it is very helpful. That's what makes this Course practical.
You just take a statement like that, and there are hundreds and hundreds of them
strewn throughout the Course, and just use it as a formula, as a framework,
that allows you to now provide a meaning for your everyday life.
Again, don't stop doing what you're doing.
Don't leave your family because it's not spiritual.
Don't leave your job because it's not spiritual enough.
Don't do all the silly things that people do, especially Course in Miracles' students do.
Be normal. Do what everybody does.
Pursue a relationship, pursue a career, pursue a family, take care of your body,
whatever that means for you. But at the same time you're doing all that,
try to cultivate -- and it takes discipline and practice -- try to cultivate
that experience of standing back with Jesus and watching yourself.
After awhile, you'll begin to really see the difference. And you'll be able
to tell the difference between the dreamer of the dream and the dream figure.
The dream figure is the person on stage, the body that does all the normal things.
That's the dream figure. And the dreamer is the one sitting in the audience
with Jesus or the Holy Spirit who now is the observer.
That's all you do. That is what upsets and reverses the ego strategy.
Because what's going on on the stage is the body,
all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players,
and what goes on in the audience,
in the theater where you're sitting with Jesus, is the mind.
Now, if you get frightened, then instead of turning to the right,
where Jesus is, you turn to the left where your ego is.
And when you turn to your ego, the ego very quickly causes you to forget
that you're sitting in the theater. And the ego would have you believe
you really are Steve on the stage,
which means your decision maker not only has ceased to be an observer,
it has ceased to be a decision maker.
Because now listening to the ego, the voice to your left, you are now back on stage,
believing you're on stage, until at some point you get upset by what's happened,
you realize something is really wrong, and then
you go back into the theater and now you turn to the right.
Yes, Barbara
It's a constant problem for me trying to separate the decision maker from Barbara.
So when you say to be in another place, that seems to help.
But I mean I find most of the time, I'm watching my behavior from this seat.
And so then, who is it? It's harder. It gets confused. It gets muddy.
All right. If you could watch Barbara -- forget about where you're sitting --
if you could watch Barbara do her thing and not judge her,
then you must be in the audience with Jesus or the Holy Spirit.
Because the ego always judges. If you could watch Barbara --
oh gee, there she is doing this silly thing again.
She'll only feel guilty, she'll only be depressed, she'll only be this, she'll only be that,
and you could watch that and say, you know, but she's just frightened.
She's just a frightened little girl who thinks salvation is this, that or the other thing.
And you could do it just in that spirit, then there's no judgment.
If there's no judgment, there cannot be an ego.
And that automatically means that you're beginning to develop
that experience of stepping back and watching yourself.
But if you get angry at yourself, if you get frightened, if you get anxious,
if you get guilty, then you know it's your ego, which means you're not looking.
But see, that seems to come in later. At the moment, I could feel if
I'm in my right mind looking at myself, but then later on, the judgment comes in.
Okay. But that's helpful, too. So now you have an experience
of sitting without judgment looking at yourself, and then somehow,
before you know it, you're making judgments.
But then there has to be something in you that knows you're making a judgment.
And something in you that knows you're making a judgment,
which contrasts with some former period when you were not making a judgment.
Well, that's helpful. The ego would never let you do that.
And you just keep practicing that.
That's the only thing which will give your life meaning.
I mean nothing here means anything.
If you really look at it objectively, you don't need Shakespeare
to tell you that or the Course even. Just look at nothing really works.
Nothing works outside in the larger sense and nothing works personally.
In the end, everybody dies. So what's the point?
So what this does is that it gives meaning.
That's why those early workbook lessons are so important,
because Jesus is trying to have you shift the purpose.
He's not saying nothing in this room is meaningful.
He's saying the purpose you've given to these things is what makes them meaningless.
There's a meaningful purpose that is hidden behind the ego's meaningless purpose,
but you first have to be taught it's meaningless.
You have to stop trying to fix things in the world
and make things work in the world. You have to stop deluding yourself
that there's hope of meaningful change in this world.
The world was made so there won't be meaningful change.
But the mind can change. And this is a Course, again,
in helping us become mindful so we could change our mind.
This does not mean that behaviorally you don't do things in the world.
It means you do them for another purpose.
A lot of the do-gooders in the world are doing the good for the wrong reason.
They're reasons of specialness, reasons of reinforcing separation.
It is possible to do good in the world that benefits people in the world
as the world would judge it, but to do it from a different point of view,
a point of view that does not try to change the outside, but wants to give
an example of someone who's changed the inside, who's changed one's mind.