I think peace is a very beautiful topic subject to go into today. For me it’s been interesting actually because I’ve been very busy seemingly in form. There’s been much going on and it’s been really nice. I’ve been going from one thing to another and it’s felt really good. But then slowly felt like I was getting into doing into this ‘do-er’ mode of problem-solving.  We solve one problem and another problem arises and for some time I’ve been going along in this rhythm which has been wonderful. But then slowly over the last few days, I could see that I couldn’t stop running. I was kind of quite pumped up and I was noticing, “am I actually truly at peace?” and it was like my energy was very high within me and each time I was doing something, I was thinking about the next thing that I needed to do. I had so many seeming things that were going on  and I didn’t realize that like I couldn’t stop.

So, we had an expression here. We had the group of us who live here at Quantico come together and I said I felt pretty good but I just have a prayer. I feel like I’m just going from one thing to another. Problem solving. Finding solutions. Trying to find solutions and I feel my energy is pretty high so I want to find that peace.

So I just put that out there and that was yesterday and it came very rapidly and it was wondering. It’s wonderful! It’s a wonderful thing that we can just pray like that and everything is going to be offered. That is the truth. Peace is no idol gift.

To say you want peace is nothing but to mean it is everything. As He teaches us, to really really want peace is to dispel everything, to let go of all guilt, to let go of everything that is in the way of peace. As Jesus teaches in Chapter 19, where he says the obstacles to peace, where he teaches that the first obstacle is that you consistently give it away.  You keep giving your peace away and that’s like our first step.

So maybe you can notice when you’re giving your peace away and that’s why I actually thought this morning on this. I woke up and I was just in this beautiful peace my prayer had been completely answered. I didn’t feel that there was anything now to rush to or to get on with or anything and I just allowed myself to stay in that stillness in that beautiful place. I just felt like, yeah this is the most important thing for me.

To nurture this is most important. What’s going on now. There’s nothing else more important than this. There’s nothing more important than taking this in and taking this into my day. That was my prayer. my prayer Once that experience  had come and then I was meditating upon that experience it was, yeah I don’t want this to end today. I don’t want to all of a sudden jump up out of this meditation and then begin the day again of getting into things as I have been. Because it can be so quick, can’t it?

It’s like I’m really in this beautiful peace and then all of a sudden something happens and then I’m caught off guard and I’m getting into things and I’m not even recognizing that I’m out of peace. So it takes a lot to continuously remember that peace is our is our goal. Is the only goal. That’s the only thing we really have to focus our attention on- am I at peace?  And if I’m not at peace then there’s a forgiveness opportunity. It was actually wonderful because I think it has been an answer to bigger prayers. I think I was like I’ve been calling for something in my heart. A deeper lesson, a deepening in something has to shift.

I was talking to my friend and she’s into astrology and I haven’t been into anything like that really since I got the Course. I used to be interested in all different things but I hadn’t been since doing the Course really just been focusing on that. She’s very interested in astrology and she started telling me oh did you know that there’s a star in the south that goes to the north and that is like your learning that you’ve brought with you and now what you need to learn to transcend. I was like oh that’s interesting and somehow it sort of caught my attention. Like, ah could be this is the Holy Spirit is trying to bring me a lesson through? I go, “can you find out what mine is?” She’s like, oh yeah yeah I’ll find out for you.

So she gets online. She said, “yeah you are on this trajectory of learning and there’s a lot, you’ve brought a lot of power and you’ve brought a lot of energy to you.  Your constellation is filled with spiritual energy. The thing is with that though is it can get a little bit destructive if it’s not used in the correct way.” And that’s basically what happened with me. She said, “oh yeah there can be a tendency for drinking and drugs.”  I was like oh yeah yeah that was me. She said, “well it seems like you moved through all that so that’s good, that’s a good sign. You’ve moved through that [Laughter] that’s a bonus.  So now it’s being used in the correct way and there’s this sort of strength. But it’s more hard in its approach. You’ve sort of mastered that hard sort of strength. But now it’s time for this softer strength and what you’re going towards is a softening because you’ve mastered the hardness.”  I’m like yeah I’ve heard this all my life and she said yeah it’s all about gentleness and I’m like, “oh God yeah here we go again.” I said, “yeah well literally whoever I’ve ever spoken to, my lesson is, ‘I think you need to be gentle with yourself. You’re always being too hard on yourself.’ She said to me, “well the thing is with this lesson, it’s so out of who you think you are that it just feels like unattainable.  I’m like, “well yeah that’s what gentleness has seemed to me in my mind, that’s like an alien word to me.”

Over this period of years, I’ve just heard this over and over again. But somehow this time it’s sort of like sunk in on a deeper level it was like yeah I could see that this is so far out of my realm that I really need to allow myself to go towards this. In a way, that’s such a beautiful thing because I actually, I do not know the way, I don’t know how to do that.

So she was looking at this chart thing and she said, “oh yeah the thing is you actually bring a lot of harmony.” She said, “You can bring a lot of balance but if you’re out of balance which you’re going towards with this gentleness and everything then obviously everything becomes unbalanced and she said so your lessons are organization. What you’re going toward is creativity and part of that is writing.”

Well, it’s so funny because I was terrible at writing at school. I was awful at all those types of things. I found it really difficult, really hard and it’s taken a lot to get my mind around it. She said, “Yeah it’s like creative writing or poetry.” I’m like, oh my God, that’s just so far out there for me. So now we’ve got writing that’s followed me throughout all this life. I’m completely terrible at that way of expressing myself. Gentleness yeah that’s been a real difficulty and she said oh yeah and through this transformation, you will bring a lot of harmony and I said yeah that’s been a struggle too. I could often bring a lot of disarmament, to be honest, and I thought, wow that makes complete sense to me that I’m really here to bring this harmony. It’s like, well I just don’t know. I just don’t know the way to, I don’t know how to do this. And of course that’s actually the best thing that I have to ask for help. There’s no other way around it. I don’t know what harmony means I don’t know how to how to do that.

She said, “there that’s how you will transcend yourself through harmony. It’s like, well yeah this makes a lot of sense because that’s one thing I haven’t really tried and of course, it’s not me that’s going to get going to do anything it’s the grace of God that will transform anything. But it’s like these lessons that seemingly we have to learn to understand ourselves more deeply and go towards it which is really the light when you think about it. You know often in the Course when you look at it, Jesus is teaching gentle lessons. He says that many many times they are very gentle there are gentle steps,  there are gentle lessons, and including in the Manual for Teachers he says that one of the characteristics of the teacher of God is gentleness. So it’s a very huge topic in A Course in Miracles too.

It’s like, okay yeah this definitely does feel the complete opposite of what I am. So, I know that’s going in the right direction and as I’ve shared before where you don’t want to go that’s where you’ll find him. It’s like, yeah well I don’t know how to go towards this, and in actual fact I don’t need to know how to go towards it you don’t need to know how to go towards your next lessons. That will all be provided for you. It just comes into the prayer and somehow it just sort of it really went into my heart.

I think actually how this all began as well is, the day before, we watched a documentary on John Lennon. It all really went in the direction of basically his death and normally I don’t really get affected by these things. But somehow it really really hit me in the heart. It was just like, wow look up in an instant his life was seemingly over at 40 years old. He just gets shot out of nowhere. He’s looking forward to the next part of his life and boom boom he’s dead on the ground in the middle of New York that’s it game over. He’s just about to do a new album, the new album is going to be coming out, it’s all pretty exciting. Life is feeling pretty good and then bam there it is. It’s all over within an instant. What actually really struck me about that was is really what the Course in Miracles is teaching and it’s that anything that’s not peace is murderous, is hate, is shame, is just pure violence. I can choose to either be in that in this instant or I can choose to be in this peace. And what I saw from the John Lennon movie, it was like yeah there was the part of him that was choosing the peace he really did want. All right he was trying to bring peace to the world, we know that peace isn’t in the world but still he had a bigger wider message to share with everybody that was part of it and yet there was this obsessive side as well he was obsessed with his wife, he was obsessed with his kid and then the next minute he gets killed by someone who’s obsessed with him.

So that’s kind of interesting you better watch what’s going on in your mind because you never know what you’re going to draw forward! Yeah sure enough, you know obviously clearly everything’s all divine timing, nothing’s ever going wrong. That was the perfect timing. His lesson was learned in this phase and he brought many many gifts to us all. And I’m here sharing his message you know. And that’s really what we’re talking about- give peace a chance. Isn’t it? It’s like today, when we look at today, have we given peace a chance? Or have we given the ego’s voice a bit more of a chance to disrupt our day? So I saw this and it touched me deep inside.

I just thought well I had to go out actually and do a bit of shopping afterwards for the community and as I was driving along I thought yeah there are so many opportunities aren’t there just to give? Whether it’s just to let someone out in front of you that needs to come out or you know to be kind to the cashier, to be open to everyone, to give that kindness. Because who’s to say what’s around the corner.

So every moment is a holy moment for me to give the true love, the true peace and the true joy.

It’s like well yeah, am I doing that in every given moment? Because I don’t know that’s when that shift may occur. It’s like, yeah wow that it just cemented in place how important that was for me.

I am here to transcend this character.
To take on this mission fully and I don’t know what that mission entails.
But I have to be so willing to put peace first.
Above everything else.
Because I just don’t know what’s around the corner.

For me, in linear time I’m 41 and it was like he died when he was 40 and I think, that was part of it I was like wow imagine if this body had left . Now have I done everything I wanted? Well in form, yeah there’s nothing here, but is my mind in complete alignment with God and I’m ready to ascend? Well no, I can’t say that so there’s plenty of work to be done.

So that is my work and my work is forgiveness and my work is peace. That’s the most important thing and so that is what started this inner inquiry. Then the next day, that’s when I was talking to my friend about astrology and thought okay maybe there’s a maybe there’s a message in there for me in which case it felt like there was. It’s like, yeah you can bring a lot of harmony and in fact it is your job to bring harmony to everything. I thought yeah that makes a lot of sense. I have got that sort of personality where if I’m in a bad mood everyone’s in a bad mood if I’m in a good mood everyone’s in a good mood. It’s like somehow I have this energy that can just bring the place down rapidly. I don’t hide how I feel so if I’m moody I’m not gonna talk I’m just gonna be honest. But equally the whole point is that to really come into this harmony and that’s what we’re here to do really we’re here to to give this harmony away. No one knows the way other than him so that felt like yeah this is making sense in my heart. It just felt very very beautiful it just felt like such a gift.

After watching this John Lennon thing and then it was funny actually these lessons that come up because then the next minute I get a message saying from a family friend. I’ve known their family since time began. Their dad just dies. He has a heart attack. He died two weeks ago in England and he had three sons. I’m friends with all of his three sons and this was like Monday after watching the John Lennon thing. It was just like that same lesson. Wow! You know we just, I never saw that one coming! He wasn’t exactly old he was about 67 or something. Like that boom there you go, game over, and again it was like, well I have to give everything. I have to give everything to this day because I just don’t… we don’t know what this life’s all about we just don’t.

We just don’t know when the game’s going to be over and in what way. That’s all we’re going to configure and in a way really there’s nothing truly to worry about any of that. But it’s like, am I giving everything? That’s my prayer. Am I truly giving to God? Am I truly giving to peace? Am I truly giving to forgiveness? Am I truly giving to love? Am I truly giving to my brothers?

So, I could take all of this back to transcend. So it was like, that death brings about life, doesn’t it? You know
it’s really one and the same thing. It’s sort of like someone dies, it makes you want to live. It’s like what the hell am I doing? That’s why I spoke to my friend who’s just seemingly lost his dad and it’s like, well yeah really were talking about the material. That he’s been much more into the material and working really really hard. Now he’s questioned that. Hold on a minute! Why am I doing this? I said, well yeah exactly.

How I see it is maybe it’s better to set my day up through being kind and considerate than it is to think about what’s best for this personal sense of self. So it makes us question everything and it’s like yeah that’s what we’re always doing we’re always wanting to question everything and really cement in place our commitment to awakening. That’s all. That’s all there is. There’s nothing else going on. So I need to be completely firm in that and to give peace a chance. In Every Day. John was right- give peace a chance.

So all of this was really beautiful with this gentleness lesson. It’s like, okay here’s this gentleness, a lesson again. I really really need to get this. I spoke to her. I said, “well yeah funny enough what happens to me is every time I feel like I’m ready for this softening and this gentleness to come in it’s like the roar of the ego comes up. Because it’s like it knows that if I really follow down that road it will be the end of the self that I made. It’s completely the opposite. He’s like, do not go in that direction. So it’s like it rares up with its anger and it’s violence in my mind and aggressiveness to stop the ship from turning in the right direction.

It’s like I was saying to her. I feel like I make just a slight little turn to gentleness and then all the demons come to haunt me to say, no you are not moving in that direction. It has actually crippled me a lot.

It’s like, oh my God how the hell am I gonna get through this? But it’s bit by bit, slowly. Continue to move in this direction. Don’t be put off by it.

She said to me, “Well do you know what the tarot card of strength is?” I said, no.  She said well I think this is actually your card because this is actually what happened. And it is that. There’s an angel (on the card) and she’s actually putting her hand into a lion’s mouth and the lion is completely submissive to her and he knows that he’s completely and utterly safe and this is the true strength. You have tamed the wildness and you’ve come into true strength true gentleness.” I’m like, God yeah ain’t that the truth.” [Laughter]

It was like she was giving me these lessons much much more deeply to be like, okay I’m really really gonna go. I’m really really gonna go in this direction.

So I made that a very very deep prayer in my heart. I really really want this and of course, straight away I could see all of a sudden my annoyance level started to go up. I started to get a bit short and my friend here we were joining and she was saying, “I felt like you were getting angry and you know you were just trying to solve problems and it didn’t feel like we were joining.”  I was like, yeah thank you so much for bringing that up. I’m glad you did because I was getting caught up into my old ways since obviously, I’ve put this prayer out there and the ego does not like it. And it was like, yeah I do want to join. Yeh, I don’t want to be getting into this aggressive manner whereby I’m making just decisions on the spot. Being a bit like Hitler. I want to really join and continuously go towards this
lesson in a beautiful way.

So I was grateful that she helped me come back and it was like yeah that’s right here it comes. To be fair I could see it but I just didn’t know how to stop it. It was just covered up again and there’s nothing really to stop if it comes up, it comes up. It’s just to be forgiven.

You can’t push the river. But I actually hope that she had that reflection now. I really want to join with you. I really want to be in this with you and it’s like oh yeah God okay good. I want that to be seen so I could completely and utterly let go of it and so that then created another space for softening.

Now we come into Wednesday and it’s like everything’s lining up perfectly and it’s so funny because then last night David plays one of my favorite movies. I play this movie a lot to help me with softening and not taking things so seriously. It’s just been that perfect movie for defenselessness for me. It’s like it just shows it perfectly. The movie is,  The Man Who Knew Too Little. Just an amazing movie to show- don’t be taking it too seriously. Because he thinks he’s in a game. He thinks he’s in the theater of life which of course he is and so he’s not taking it seriously.

Basically there are a ton of people wanting to kill him but because he doesn’t know it, he’s just acting along with the whole thing in a very very playful way. In a very very joyful way. It’s really showing us that no matter what comes my way, I don’t have to react in this aggressive way. I can just be in the theater of life and just respond to it as it’s coming as a if it is just a play.

It’s nothing to be really taken seriously. There’s nothing here to be taken seriously whatsoever. So I just
thought, wow there you go. It’s like the gods are saying, okay and here’s the movie that really touches
you that really helps you with getting in touch with this gentleness and this innocence and this defenselessness. I thought oh this is perfect. This movie’s for me and I watched it last night. I just felt very peaceful for it. I’ve watched it so many times I just enjoy laughing with that movie. It’s just so beautiful. It is a very very deep movie. Actually, it’s extremely deep and extremely joyful and after that, I felt very very calm. Then that was when I woke up in the morning and just felt this complete and utter peace which was just so beautiful. It was just, again as I started this talk, it’s no idle gift. Like, no, I’ve got nothing better to do. I could see that there were some things to do but it was like,  no I’m taking my time this morning. I’m taking more time, as much time as it is needed to be in this peace, to stay in this peace and that’s exactly what I did.

Why? Because we’re worthy of that. We’re worthy of that peace and that’s what we have to remember. The movie was The Man Who Knew Too Little with Bill Murray and that’s just the most important thing, to strengthen that and to hold that in my heart and to truly be with that. It’s like really when you really really pray and you really want things to shift they will completely and utterly shift.

This is what this is showing to me, that my prayers truly are being answered. Every single day and every single step there was just a beautiful gift that was waiting for me. That was in actual fact what David was sharing last night- that we should be going into every day as a gift. It is an adventure of the unraveling in a very very beautiful way. There are so many miracles just waiting to happen. There is so much joy around every single corner around every single encounter. That’s our attitude to be going into. That it’s just another unwrapping of the present, of the gift of what we are. When we truly want that above everything else, everything becomes a miracle. The world, the universe bows to us to give us the lesson that is needed to transform in a very very deep and very very beautiful way.

That’s what it felt like for me this week like a leading up to the movie and what David shared. That was exactly
what was happening. It was like everything was coming for a gift. lThis is another opportunity to get this lesson.
That was it. That’s what he was talking about like Jesus is only there, holy spirit is only there,  God is only there
saying, hey here’s another chance of this lesson did you get it yet? Did you get it yet? In a very soft and gentle way it doesn’t have to be hard.

It’s always been presented to you to be able to allow it to be released so you could see the light of what you are. That’s what I was seeing. It was like I was taking the breadcrumbs since Sunday of watching the John Lennon movie and now here we are and I get to share this. I get to strengthen it in my heart again to be with it and to remember this. To remember that it’s all there. It’s all there just to unravel my self-concept. It’s never about anything that’s happening in time and space.

This session, this recording is nothing. It means absolutely nothing. It’s worthless in and of itself. It doesn’t mean a thing. What means something is unraveling that self-concept. That’s all it is and as long as I get that lesson then it becomes everything. But everything that we’re doing has to be part of our prayer. It has to be part of this unraveling otherwise it is actually pointless. Yet those lessons will come around and he will continuously present himself the same as the ego will. The ego is going to be trying to present itself that you are this worthless thing as what it tries to do to me but what we do when we come together here is we are sharpening up that we want is the true gift of the spirit to join in that true presence in that love. We are turning that ship slowly but surely in whatever our lesson might be, whatever we’re not wanting to go towards. That is what we need to go towards and know that if you do know who walked with you wouldn’t have that fear. That’s what he teaches as he teaches. God these steps are so simple. Why? Because I’m with you.

So even for me and sitting here it’s only the personal self that’s saying, I can’t possibly reach this gentleness, this harmony. Because in truth, I can’t. Because the personality is not going to get it. So it has to be given to me in a deeper prayer. So that’s why really I’m just putting this out there and saying,  okay I am willing to have this prayer be met. To have my mind changed completely and utterly and that’s all you have to do with whatever’s going on for you. It can be a very very simple step. It doesn’t ever have to be difficult.

All payers are answered
Always
Your prayers are being answered.

If you have something that’s really on your chest that needs to be raised up and you need your next step to support the awakening now is a good time to join.

I join you deeply in your prayer for this unraveling so it can’t be let go of forever

So thank you so much for joining me.
Many blessings going into the week let’s expect miracles
Bye for now