Gary Renard (48:58)
I mean, you know, if you're. If you're a body, you know, you're dead in a few years. But if you are immortal spirit, which is what the course teaches, you can actually start to experience that even while you appear to be here. And eventually, as you stop yourself from judging and begin forgiving not because it's real, which. Which is judgment, but makes it not real, which is not judging it and looking at it without judgment, then that's the second step. The third step would simply be to engage in what the course calls vision. You can also call it spiritual sight. And what that is is to overlook the illusion, overlook the body, and think of people as being what they really are and where they really are. So, you know, if I, you know, meet you somewhere and I'm having a. A normal conversation with you, and I hope that people will have normal conversations even when they're doing a course in miracles. Yeah, because some people, they become so spiritual, they forgot how to carry on a normal conversation. And what you do is, while you're being normal and living a normal life, you can think of people as being the perfect creation of God that they really are. So it's kind of like you're overlooking the body, even though you. You're living normal. And you're thinking of that person as being this perfect divine creation of God that is not part of it. You know, remember, spirit is not a partial attribute. So you're thinking in terms of oneness now. So. So to me, in the back of my mind, you are nothing less than God. You are not part of it. You are all of it, because that is the way that God created you. And one of the big lines in the course is, I am as God created me. His son can suffer nothing, and I am his son. You know, to some people, they think, well, Jesus is God's only son. And that's not the course's way of teaching. We're all God's one child, and we're all going home to have that experience which will become our permanent experience because it is permanent. In fact, it's the only thing that is permanent and reality is permanent because it is changeless. So you have unreality which shifts and change. This is a world of shift and change. That's all it does. In fact, that's all you can depend on in this world, is that it's not going to be the same a minute from now than it appears to be right now. You know, how can you depend on that? You know, how can you depend on a body that isn't going to be here? You know, and the whole thing is always shifting and changing. Reality, on the other hand, is something that is totally changeless and totally a constant. You know, that's the thing that Jesus was alluding to 2000 years ago when he talked about building your house upon the rock instead of the sand. You know, even the rock changes a little bit, but it's, you know, Metaphor. He's saying you want to choose what doesn't change instead of what does change. And what doesn't change is eternal. And that is God, that is heaven. In fact, it turns out the word eternal, you know, I first heard that where I thought, yeah, sounds like a long time, you know, eternal. And actually what it means is without time, in eternity, there's no such thing as time. So you don't have a past to be guilty about, you don't have a future to be worried about. And you're engaging in this incredible experience that we can only try to imitate, you know, in this world. I. I was talking with one of my teachers, Pursa, who appears as this beautiful, amazing looking woman. You know, you got this beautiful woman and you got this guy, Arden. He's kind of like a Greek looking guy, tall, dark, handsome. I hate him. And then you get a person and it's like, yeah. I said, you know, no time, and it's always the same. Yeah. Isn't that kind of boring? And she just looked at me and she said, well, Gary, is sex boring? I said, well, no, not in my book. And she said, well, imagine the peak of a perfect sexual orgasm, except this orgasm never stops. Keeps going on forever in its flawless intensity. And I said, you have my attention. And it's like that oneness with God, that's what it's like. It's like a perfect orgasm. And all that we can do in this world is try to imitate it, which is what we've done. We have made up relationships, including sexual relationships, as an attempt, a vain attempt to try to substitute for the relationship that we think that we have lost with our creator. And what we really want to do is, I'm not saying you can't have fun while you're here to be here. What I'm saying is that we want to go for the real deal. You know, we want to go home to the real thing. And the real thing is God. And in fact, that's the only thing that will ever really satisfy us. We will never be really satisfied with anything less than all of it. You know, I've met billionaires over the years and I'll talk to them and they'll say, you know, Gary, yeah, I got everything I could ever want. I can have anything I could ever want. And I still feel like something is missing. And I'll just look him right in the face and I'll say, well, you know, that's because something is missing. And what is missing is God. And you, you know, you may not want to hear that because you may not be into God, but I'm telling you, you will never be satisfied with anything less than all of it. And you know, I might hear from them six months later or a year later and maybe they start doing the workbook of the course or something and they'll say, you know what? I think you were right. Because this is starting to undo that feeling that something is missing. You know, I'm starting to feel more whole and full and complete and that's what we really are. It's something that has nothing lacking at all. And it doesn't depend on circumstances in this world. I mean, after all, how many yachts can you water ski behind anyway? You know, I mean, you know, you got $188 billion. Is 190, you know, two more billion really going to make a difference? I mean, what we want is the real thing. And the real thing is an experience doesn't have anything to do with anything outside of us. That will never do it. And I'm not saying that, you know, people can't have a normal life and still have their hopes and their dreams and their goals and their relationships and all that. What I'm saying is that there's something just beyond that and it's here and it's here right now and it's God and God's kingdom is here right now. And that's what you want to go for. And that's why the course talks about saving us all this time. Because it's undoing what is preventing the experience of that. And experience, even though it looks very intellectual at first, a course in miracles turns out to be very experiential because it's undoing the false experience. I'm not saying that people that their experience isn't real for them. I'm not saying, look, yeah, it is your experience that you're a body and that there's pain and that you have all these negative experiences. What I'm telling you is that it is a false experience, that what we're seeing is not true. And I almost hesitate to say this, but this world that people think is this glorious creation of God, it's not. And God had nothing to do with it. You know, God had nothing to do with creating this world. That's why I say that A course in miracles is a purely non dualistic system because it's saying that of the two seeming worlds, the world of God and the world of man, only the world of God is true and the world of man is not. True. Nor is anything in it, period. And that's why this is such an uncompromising thing. That's why I say I, I was kind of like sucked into teaching it, but right. That's the truth. God has nothing to do with this world. And that's kind of like an alien thought to some people. But think about it. If God had nothing to do with this world, well, maybe that means that he's not as crazy as we are. You know, maybe that means that there is still a perfect home for us to go home to, rather than this crazy miscreation that we thought God made. When the truth is, God is still perfect, still in heaven, still that awareness of perfect oneness, still that home that Jesus is talking about in the story of the prodigal son, you know, going home. And maybe what God wants is not for us to do anything here, but to come home to him. And the course is saying, look, there's a fast way to do that. And the fast way is not by making this real, this world, or worshiping this world or anything in it, but by overlooking the miscreation and replacing it with the creation, replacing it with reality, which is God in his kingdom.