The principal focus of this inaugural episode of Practicum is to explore our personal journeys in relation to A Course in Miracles, elucidating how the teachings of this profound text have manifested in our lives. We, Aaron and Daniel, embark upon this dialogue to share insights garnered from over two decades of engagement with these teachings, emphasizing the transformative power of forgiveness and self-discovery.

Through this podcast, we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the course's chapters, offering context and personal narratives that illuminate its relevance and applicability to our everyday experiences. As we delve into the intricacies of our respective paths, we underscore the essential notion that the journey toward spiritual awakening is both individual and communal, inviting listeners to reflect on their own experiences within this framework.

With a commitment to authenticity and exploration, we extend an invitation to our audience to join us as we navigate the rich tapestry of spiritual understanding woven throughout A Course in Miracles. In the inaugural episode of the Practicum podcast, Aaron and Daniel embark on a profound exploration of A Course in Miracles, a spiritual text that has significantly influenced their lives.

They begin by recounting their personal stories of discovery, emphasizing how the course often finds individuals during moments of existential questioning or emotional upheaval. Daniel reflects on his initial skepticism and subsequent acceptance of the course, while Aaron shares a heartfelt narrative about receiving the book amidst personal loss, illustrating the course's capacity to provide comfort and clarity when needed most.

The discussion soon evolves into an examination of the core themes inherent in A Course in Miracles, such as forgiveness, healing, and the importance of self-awareness. Both speakers stress the transformative power of these teachings, suggesting that the journey towards enlightenment is inherently tied to one's willingness to confront the ego and embrace vulnerability. They articulate the necessity of humility in the spiritual journey, positing that true understanding comes not from intellectual comprehension but from lived experience and personal reflection.

As they set the stage for future episodes, Aaron and Daniel emphasize their commitment to delving into each chapter of the course, aiming to provide listeners with insights that resonate on a personal level. This episode serves as an invitation for audiences to join them on this journey of exploration, encouraging a deeper engagement with the teachings of A Course in Miracles as a means to foster personal growth and spiritual awakening.

Takeaways:

• This podcast serves as a resource for individuals engaged in practicing A Course in Miracles.
• We aim to share our respective journeys over the past twenty years with the audience.
• Each episode will delve into the chapters of A Course in Miracles, offering context and personal experience.
• The overarching theme emphasizes the importance of forgiveness and healing in achieving inner peace.
• We explore the idea that the journey is highly individual, though the curriculum remains the same for all.
• Listeners are encouraged to internalize the teachings, recognizing that the path to understanding lies within themselves.
• • A Course In Miracles - official site
  • Daniel Wagner — Self-knowledge, inquiry and consciousness

Hi, welcome to Practicum.

I'm Aaron.

I'm Daniel.

And we're here for our first Practicum podcast.

And what Practicum is, is a podcast for those who are practicing A Course in miracles, who have questions, who have interests.

In this book, we're going to share our 20 year journey each respectively, and talk a little bit about it.

We have goals to make multiple podcasts going through each of the chapters of A Course in Miracles and giving some context and some perspective on how it's experienced in our lives and how it might help you.

So let's begin.

So I just wanted to say, when Aaron says every chapter, this is us committing to potentially 32 podcast episodes.

So we're starting with episode one, which I guess is going to be an overview of how the two of us ended up in the first place.

Doing this podcast and how we ended up or how the cause found us is maybe a better way than how we found the cause.

Yeah, I think that's a great way to start.

When was yours?

That would have been a bit later.

2009, I would guess.

It was just one of these.

Yeah, I don't want to know, but it had knocked on my door before.

Well, I think it tends to find you as opposed to you finding it, and it tends to find you when you need it, just very quickly.

My story is a colleague had given me the book at the time of a family member's passing.

And I wasn't really sure of it, to be honest with you.

You know, I was raised Catholic, traditional, you know, have a Christian background.

And to look at other things was a little scary for me at first.

I don't know if you had that experience or not.

I mean, I come from a Catholic background, being Austrian, but my mom's half Jewish, my father's Protestant.

So I grew up in a non religious household with a deep yearning for a meaning beyond the ordinary.

And I meandered around the whole world in all mystics and all mystic philosophies.

I think it's hard to go from a place of having a traditional Christian church oriented background where largely spirit is present, but not necessarily as present as it is within you.

And I think understanding that and making that leap is really hard for people.

Really nicely put, Aaron.

You know, I read this quote and I like quoting quotes.

Making my own.

Today in the west we talk A lot about God, but we don't talk a lot with God and it feels like the same here.

The Holy Ghost was a, a concept or spirit and there was just no way in Catholic belief or, or, or doctrine how to access it.

It was just like it's something somewhere, but definitely not pointing to it's in you or can be experienced.

You know, be still and know that I am God is one of the most important passages in the Bible.

And I don't know if that was always present in my church education.

There was a lot more historical knowledge, understanding of stories, trying to put parables into, into life's practice, but less so an opportunity to commune directly with, with, with your creator and understand how to do that.

And it's a difficult journey to get to that place, but I think that's obviously very worth it.

And as the course says, as we'll get into in a little bit, it really is a metaphor for life.

As the course is life.

It's just a question of how long do you want to be on the path of discovering what's inside you versus being unconscious to that.

And I think it comes at the right time.

I can only agree, I mean, because we can't make it happen.

But there's a few small things that I picked up.

First of all, when you said be still and know that I am God, I thought you quoting the Impersonal life, Joseph Banner, which is for me like a western mystic, you know, who wrote a book called the Impersonal Life, which Elvis Presley quotes the second most important book in his life next to the Bible.

And that's a different story how this book came into my life.

But I fully agree with you that this is maybe I call it the only game in town.

You know, when we reach a certain age, when we've done certain things, it points always back to the same thing.

Can we get to know who we truly are?

And for me there is always been an urgency, which is an irony because the course talks about the time is a, a total illusion, but it is present in the illusion.

So while we're still scrambling, we believe that time is urgent and of the essence.

But the deeper we understand the cause and who we are, the more I think there is a relaxing into it, which I think is, is key because when I did the course first, I was entering it with an achievement mindset of, you know, I want to get to the end of the course so that I feel self realized and get it, you know, that there was a me wanting to get it, willing my Will be done, not his will be done.

To quote the irony.

But I was a sincere student, but I really wanted to get it, you know, and if I reread it, as every year comes around, you go deeper.

You're like, I didn't understand anything.

And I'm assuming that next year is going to be the same, that there's a deeper cut of the same.

Messages that are very concise.

I think, I think when I approached it, I was in a place of curiosity around the afterlife.

I approached it from a place of sadness for the loss of seeing my religion go through what it went through.

I approached it from feeling a little vacant inside and needing to have some fulfillment.

And I had a not, not dissimilar.

I had a. I had an achievement mindset.

I wanted to achieve something.

I got about halfway through it.

The first time I approached it in the lessons.

I read the whole text, but I got through it about halfway through the lessons.

And I like to joke that it kind of felt like I was a bit like Luke Skywalker.

I had learned a little bit, I had knew enough, but then Darth Vader just kicked my butt and I went back out.

And the karma and the various things that you face as you're removing these obstacles that are really just self implosions that you're just removing, it's painful because it's of the ego.

It's of an attachment of your mind to who you identify as or what you think you are.

But as you learn more, that none of that is real, that only, only right now is true.

And only from that place of absolute, you know,.

Naked,.

You know, birth of this moment is where all things are possible.

It's not in the past, it's not in the future.

And as you learn that, it's just, it's very difficult to let go of the mind's conceptions of what you think you are.

I have a theory.

No, I just have a theory that I wanted to ask you because so many people, including my own experiences, you get across a work like the course in miracles.

You have your first go at it and then it seems like you are taking a pause.

And it felt like I'm taking a conscious break from the course.

But it feels also like looking back, I had enough medicine in me for the medicine to work.

So it feels like when you're telling me you thought like, okay, this is it, but now you have to be thrown out back into the illusion of the world.

And now it's starting to work on you, eradicating some of the karma or blockages.

And then you're like, okay, I'm cleansed now to go back.

And that's what it felt like to me.

I mean, it could be like, it could be that.

I mean, I think everybody has their own individual journey, of course.

I mean, I, I get the sense that, as it says, and we'll, we'll introduce on this podcast a little bit of the opening and some of the principles of miracles.

You know, I think as it says, you know, when you're ready to, when you're ready to take it, you know you'll take it.

And when you're, and when you're not taking it, then it waits for you to come back to it.

But what, again, it gets back to this concept of, you know, it's, it's not really about the course itself.

It's about your life's experiences and your journey home to what's inside you and to identifying with that foremost above all other things.

And in your relationship to your creator and words, words seem to fail.

All, all things seem to fail in really explaining this, you know, and its experiences that you'll have.

But at the same time, it is, it is once the decision is made, once you've decided that you've had enough of the suffering of the egoic world, that decision gets made and you turn yourself over to a higher power.

And from there it's in charge, whether you understand it or not, because I don't even to this day understand it, but I know that that power is in charge.

I'm hearing a key ingredient here to my own experience, which is the arrival of humility, you know, from the guy who wanted to achieve enlightenment by his own doing and willing to.

I'm not in charge.

I'm not in control, surrendering to a greater power.

The second thing I'm hearing, which is just so important for me to mention, if you come from a Christian background, it might be Catholicism or Protestantism or many of the other flavors around the world.

And then you re encountered the Word or Jesus mission through the course in miracles, there is a question, why did it have to be re channeled or retold?

And for me, it is a very different approach.

When you learn Bible new, if you read New Testament early in life, you very quickly get it and it is an idea of understanding.

And then later in life, it's very hard to undo this first setting.

But the course has done for me is to unset the first conception of what I thought I understood and added so much more to it.

You know, including the total erasion of the idea of being born a sinner and having to redeem yourself through penance and some of these Catholic myths that are still very pervasive, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, I think you're touching upon the sense of the fractured word.

Right.

I mean, in the beginning, the Word was with God and, you know, concepts like the Word, concepts like the Holy Spirit, further we could drill into as time goes by.

All these things were mysteries to me.

I didn't understand or have a sense for them.

I have now have a sense for those things because of the journey that I've been on with the course in Miracles.

I understand the Word.

It's amazing to think about how abstract we've made God's creation when it's so simple to simply look at and understand and engage with.

And this idea of spirit and how it.

I just thought it was a bird with a.

With a beautiful leaf in its mouth and I couldn't understand it or relate to it as it related to the Trinity.

And I think when you look at.

At least for me, of course, in Miracles did for me was is.

It opened my.

It opened me up.

It took me from a very narrow, concrete view of the world that I could.

I could be comfortable with right in my own mind.

And it threw me into the ocean.

And you're trying to swim and you're taking in knowledge from all over the place as you break that mold, so to speak.

And so you.

And you know, and maybe you've had this.

I've had journeys into a variety of different religions now and studying them.

Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, all of them.

Looking at all the religions and trying to understand my own religion, my own faith, my own, My own background.

Because it's only reinforced it and the teacher inside reinforces it even further.

So we can.

So we can talk about, you know, historical aspects like the multiple books that were written in the first 60 years of post Christ's death and how many of them were hidden and all these fractured pieces of information are all over the place.

And that's the point, of course, you cannot see the whole.

You'll never see the whole.

The only way to see the whole is within you by the grace of God.

What you touched on is for me, in my personal journey, also important.

It feels like I didn't recognize the value of.

And I don't say Christianity, but Jesus in its own right and the church around it.

And the Christianity that was formed is a very different story.

But I spent decades in Hinduist contemplation and Meditation.

And you know, it feels like now at tender age of 60, I'm returning to my roots and I just try to find a T.S.

Eliot quote where he says, you know, at the end we come back to the place we started from, but seeing it new for the, like it was for the first time.

And I butchered the quote terribly.

So for all the poetry buffs out there, please, T.S.

Eliot, forgive me, but the idea is that I feel I'm returning to something and I wonder why I was wandering away from it, but it was needed to recognize or see it for its truth and for its beauty.

I'm, I'm just noticing that you and my experience are similar and yet so different.

But when I ran my first course year, we did it in a group, which really helped me to stick with the lessons.

And we had weekly calls where we discussed our learnings, our meanings.

And it was so clear that everybody had a very individual experience of the same words.

So it is, the word is fractured, as you said.

And I sometimes think this is the meaning of the Tower of Babel, that we just all living in separate worlds, trying desperately to meet in a place that feels common, which from my experience now is the stillness.

It's the language of the heart.

This is where we are speaking the same language.

It's where we meet.

I think the concept of, of Jesus is a historical figure.

Jesus is a, is also, you know, this, He's a mystery in and of himself.

Right?

And, and you know, the truth.

The truth is there was a historical figure that went through a crucifixion by the hands of the Romans.

But the bigger truth is if you think of yourself and you think of God as you're a thought in God's mind, you're an idea.

And if we are from that place, we're very naturally not physical.

We're in a, we're in a subtle, much more subtle, much more abstract way, way of being.

And, and I, you know, for me that is light, right?

We are light.

And, and in that way we do the dance with the denser materials of, of the physical and the darkness really.

And the dance between the dark and the light is what we experience here on a daily basis in our lives and for us.

How I like to think about Jesus is that this act, that this selfless, perfect human went through was to create the path and the way for us and to model for us how to be, how to Connect and how to live fully human and to inter relate with one another.

So I like to think of the Christ as all the minds that are conscious of God, that are able to work within that field of energy and light and vibration and beautiful bliss that comes with experiencing it.

And you know, and that comes, as you say, that comes in our communion, that comes in meditation.

Yeah, when what you just said, again, I feel like you're saying something and then I keep saying the same thing in my words to reiterate it, but also to deepen my own understanding of it.

Because Jesus the Christ, the anointed one, has, has shown what is possible if you live from a place of connectedness and love.

But what I didn't get from the early Catholic teachings, that forgiveness of the other and yourself is the way to salvation and that this is real and experienceable.

You know, so often, and I even judge myself sometimes, like, am I just using an escape route here, thinking that religion is giving me a comfort blanket to live with the, the potentially meaningless, purposeless existence?

But then I had made so many experiences that are feeling so real to me that this is not just an idea, but it's, it's a, it's a bold and brave for me, bold and brave in path to commit to personally and publicly.

This podcast is for me a bold thing because I'm sharing that I'm on this path publicly, whoever's listening or not.

Just that I'm speaking it out is different to doing it in my own little meditation chamber at home.

But the summary for me is that, yes, he showed us that this is possible, that this life can be lived in a certain way, and the principles of love and forgiveness lead to this freedom that is possible in this world in this form, you know, well, it's.

Gonna, it's gonna be fun to go through, I think over the next couple months as we, as we dig into releasing this podcast, all the different chapters and how, how it constructs and our interpretation, our experiences with those concepts and you know, the idea it starts out with is nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.

Now, when you first read that, you're like, what does that even mean?

How did you interpret that?

Yeah, actually, I wanted to ask you, but thank you for asking me first.

So.

So nothing real can be threatened.

And nothing un.

Say it again.

And nothing unreal, nothing unreal exists here in life here.

Like the peace of God for me, the way I understand it today, and this is an ever deepening understanding which I'm Sure I haven't reached the.

The bottom of is that the eternity of the creation can never be threatened because there's nothing outside the creation that could threaten it.

So God, everything, the all pervading, all powerful, all the universes and, and everything we know of what should it or could it be ever threatened by?

So that eternal that is the reality of who we are is that love energy, that source energy that created everything that is impossible to be threatened because there's nothing outside of it, it could threaten it.

And if that was so, then the opposite has to be true as well.

That everything that can be threatened must be of the nature of illusion or untruth.

And if you get that at whatever level, you get it intellectually as a beginning, that you have a sense of recognition that therein lies a peace, the peace of God.

And I guess quoting scripture, this is the piece that passeth all understanding because it is not just the I have created a certain comfort that feels like a moment of respite.

That's not the peace, but that is the, the momentary present moment awareness that is eternity, which for me is a concept that is now pretty much locked in.

I get that that moment to moment awareness is the eternity, the timeless space.

How do you understand it, Aaron, for you, how is that first opening?

You know, it's like it is like when they talk about mysteries of God and things like that.

And it's the gentle unfolding of that mystery in your own mind and how you understand it and interpret it.

Because how it Sat with me 20 years ago is much different than how it sits with me today.

I actually don't remember how it sat with me when I first read it.

I probably was like, I don't understand this.

This looks very foreign to me.

And I took a leap of faith as I began my practice of a course in miracles.

I can tell you today that I look at it from a place of it's eternal life.

And understanding that whatever shape your mind is in now is the shape it will be in tomorrow unless you make the deliberate acts to change that.

And I think that that means that's your shape.

When you pass, you take your mind's contents with you into the afterlife.

And you, you're going to be left with the same.

It doesn't change until you have the intervention with spirit to help you change.

And whether that means reincarnations, real people can take that for what it's worth.

But for me, eternal life is, is.

Is the understanding.

And you want to live that in peace.

You want to live that in harmony, and that's accessible to us right now.

And I think when we look out of the world that's going through devastation.

I mean, one of the reasons why I'm feeling brave enough to do a podcast is because of.

I know people need help.

I know we're at a place where the world is really scary.

And I'm here to tell you there's release from that.

There's a place to go to get a higher level of understanding.

And as we get into the.

The different chapters, you know, we're going to.

We're going to go through the meaning of miracles, the sep. And how this existence laid out in this way in this book helps us interpret ourselves and our relationships to our environment much better.

And from that place, things change.

You've experienced it, I've experienced it.

And it is a relinquishment of everything you thought you knew.

Because you're learning to take the conditioning of the world, the conditioning of your parents, your teachers, all the things that your mind has been filled up with, and then remove it all and get back to that, what they call it in Zen Buddhism, the beginner's mind, and get back to that space.

And it's a phenomenal life experience to go through.

But I think this is, this is, this is, you know, whether it's this path, whether it's another path, the path is the same for everyone.

It's just.

It may be a different road that you're traveling.

You know, this is just one path.

This is, this isn't the end all, be all of all paths.

It is, it is my path, it's your path.

But, but I think at the end of the day, you all, we all have to.

We all are on this journey.

I mean, what you pointed to is what generally you could call your mistaken identity.

I would speak about my parents, the story of me, where I'm from, what I'm doing, and all of that becomes so concretized that we start to believe that's who we are.

And I think what the cause, not what I think what I experienced, this course does, is not just release the straight jacket, but break it down, you know, and, and enter you in the space that I like to call source, because it feels like it's the beginning and where everything starts from.

And I also want to speak to what you just said.

Path.

People are saying we're on the path.

The, the.

The course itself says that the curriculum is the same for everybody, right?

There is only one curriculum, and the course in miracles is one that has got a Christian lens, you could say, or it goes through the idea of Christ.

But every.

There is only one story.

There's only one path that we're all on, which is to remember, reconnect, go back to, but not in the feeling that we have to return is a return to our Creator.

Right.

And recognizing this relationship, us as his Son and the Creator.

God is the truth and has been established in eternity.

That should give relief.

That simple concept should give you relief no matter what the situation is.

It's.

Yeah, the idea that, you know, you just.

I'm just going to pick up on the remembering part.

The mind is.

We're going to get into explaining the mind as the sessions continue on, but just kind of as some previewing my understanding of my body versus my mind and not understanding the difference between the two and how the two interacted and how the mind is really an antenna to draw in the spiritual and to connect with the spiritual.

And, you know, I didn't meditate before I started this.

I would have said I have no idea how to still my mind.

You know, what I.

What I appreciated about it was, it was, you know, five minutes here, five minutes there.

As you're starting out, you're just trying to draw awareness and a sense for the energies moving through the body.

And it gently takes you to deeper, to deeper.

You know, I think at the end of it only asks for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes of night.

And so what you're doing is you're essentially just stealing yourself for 15 minutes twice a day.

So the simplicity of it is quite simple.

At the same time, I don't know if you noticed this, but I noticed that my meditations got longer.

They got longer.

They get longer and longer and longer.

And I noticed that my appetite to devour the fragmented word of God, that's all over the place.

That's not in any one religion.

That's really beyond religion because it's.

Because it's something that you can.

You can only see within yourself.

And I think that that's.

That that journey of.

It just opens up the world to you.

So.

So having.

I want to go back to.

Actually I want to go back to the book you just mentioned because we were talking about this off, offline earlier this week.

We both got a book that showed up to us kind of in the way books do that are like this.

Do you want to just share a little bit about.

Yeah, I mean, the story we.

We have is pretty crazy.

My partner and I, about a year ago were a Little bit of a disoriented loss of what our spiritual journey is, in which direction it could go.

And her and I, we only recently put our bookshelves together.

So I literally woke up at three in the morning and went to the bookshelf and just pulled out randomly.

It felt randomly, of course, to me, a handful of books.

And one book that fell out was the Impersonal Life.

And I started reading it and I was at this point quite involved in Ramana Maharshi's self inquiry, which is the I am that I am, you know, literally asking a deconstructing question of who are you?

Until you come to the end to understand that you are connected and part of God.

So Joseph Benner, which I think is the author, wrote a book about 100 years ago and I think it was a pharmacist.

But anyway, I started reading this book and it spoke immediately of the I am.

And I'm thinking, how is it possible that he has acquired this knowledge?

Anyway, I shared it with my partner and she didn't recognize the book and told her father about it who then said that I gave you that book 20 years ago.

I gave a copy to all my children.

Right.

And she didn't even have a recollection that this book was given to her.

And it fell out of the bookshelf in the moment it was required to be to be read.

And my partner is not an avid reader.

She is not like me, who loves to study and devour information.

But this book has ever since been a recursive read.

So she's literally coming to the end and starting at the beginning again.

She's starting to make notes and get deeper understanding.

And she was with multiple different masters from different traditions.

And her journey is towards trusting her own voice, her inner guidance.

And this book has been tremendous help to achieving that.

So this is how the book came into our life.

And we bought up all the second hand stock we could find in Germany on different marketplaces.

And it was last year's Christmas present for all the people that she loved, including her kids, who said, I really don't want the book.

And she said, just keep it, it might fall out of your bookshelf at one point in the future.

What about you, man?

How did he come to you?

Well, I mean, I, I honestly, I have no idea.

To be fair, it may have been a scrolling situation where it just, I just clicked on it and I downloaded it.

And then a couple days later I realized I downloaded a book and I shared that with you.

And the synchronicity of you being exposed to that and having that is.

Is similar.

But this is.

But I only bring that out because this is a course in miracles story, right?

This is how.

This is the knowledge, the information, the teacher, whatever you need to support you on your journey.

If you're authentic and at a heart level, it shows up.

And what's great is it only reinforces things.

Right.

The more broad you are in your study and your approach, the more you're going to find that the symbols are out there.

That what is a word, especially written on paper?

It's a symbol for something.

And the symbols are out there, and you will find them, and the teacher inside will help you relate to them.

And you'll marvel at the timing of these things and how they show up and the way they are in your lives.

And those are little gifts.

They're just little gifts for you to be assured.

Yes.

And I think that is also part of the miracle, is that when we start tuning into that frequency, they are everywhere and they are happening all the time.

And I think we still have some time to kind of a definition because chapter one is the meaning of miracles.

And within that there is a first section called Principles of Miracles.

And then I read here number six, miracles are natural.

When they do not occur, something has gone wrong.

And I just find that such a fascinating insight that if we do not experience miracles in our lives on a regular basis, we have to tune ourselves or retune ourselves or attune ourselves to that, to that world.

Yeah, I mean, I was reviewing the Principles of Miracles going into this podcast, and there were a number that stood out.

Miracles are a natural sign of forgiveness.

Through miracles, you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others.

You know, the freedom that comes with forgiveness of laying something down and just allowing it to be, but not putting energy into it, not putting your focus, attention and passion into a negative record playing on the record player.

You know, it kind of just spins around in circles and you allow that conversation to just eat you inside out.

And the breaking of that and how that has happened time and time again with another relationship, and you're able to put that relationship into a great place just through the power of your mind and allowing something to go away.

You know, that, to me, I think, is one of the more amazing aspects of forgiveness itself.

And, boy, that's all Jesus.

That's what he taught us.

Yeah, for me, one of the.

I mean, there are 50 descriptions of principle, 50 principles of miracles just in this, in this one section of chapter one.

And the one I, I love and was so clear to me is that only because our eye cannot see something, our physical eye, we do not believe the invisible, right?

So there is a real challenge for us to see the invisible.

And all the miracle stuff happens at the level of the invisible.

But it says in the book, only because we can't see it doesn't mean it isn't true.

And I think that's such a simple explosion for, for the mind that wants to hold on to conceptual thinking, right?

To say, like, only because you can't see it.

I mean, we know that, right?

We see a physical world.

We know there is infrared and there are other layers of measurable light we can't see.

And of course it goes beyond, beyond, beyond only because we don't have instruments for it in the scientific world.

We cannot just preclude it from existence.

So the definitions of miracles, I think is really important because it is not something otherworldly.

It literally just transcends the body, as it says here in 17 from the principles.

They are sudden shifts into this invisibility away from the body level.

And that's why they heal.

Because all of this has also to deal with the gift of healing yourself and healing others from the afflictions of the mind and what it created.

There's this idea of seeing with your own physical eyes and then, and then seeing with your spiritual eyes is, is, is clarifying in a way that, you know, as we were saying earlier, the conditioning that you're brought up with, all the experiences that you've had have created an outer experience.

That outer experience is internalized and interpreted.

Either you shut it, shut the internal off because your pain or your suffering has gotten to a point where you just don't want to internalize what you're seeing on the outside.

You want to keep it at the surface level.

And you don't have access to.

That.

Teacher, that can help you understand what you're experiencing and help you see the journey that you're on because you're in a story, you're in a play, so to speak.

One of the things that came to me at some point was the Kybalion, which was the Hermetic principles.

And it helped me take and understand a course in miracles, yet another layer of understanding with my journey with this book.

And there's really seven core principles to the Kybalion.

One is the all is mind, the universe is mental.

God is mental.

God is mind.

God is not physical.

The, the idea of correspondence as, as above, so below that, you know, when we say the.

Our Father we say, or you know, on earth, as it is in heaven, right.

What is the relationship from spirit to.

To soul, to.

To body and.

And how.

How we're experiencing things as above, so below.

Vibration.

Nothing rests.

Everything moves.

When you begin meditation, you're going to start to notice that subtle vibration.

That subtle vibration gets bigger and bigger as you're deeper and deeper in meditation.

The principle.

And you notice the high vibes, the good vibes, and you notice the low vibes.

And this is all we call it, right?

It's all in our pop culture.

Yes.

I just want to say, even in pop culture, we refer to these things, you know, high vibes, low vibes, good vibes.

Number four, the principle of polarity.

That everything has its pair of opposites.

That there is a, you know, that.

That everything is dual.

The principle of rhythm.

Everything flows in and out.

Look at the stars and the moons and the relationship of that on our bodies and the gravitational pull and all the other, as you say, the different.

The different fields of energy that we can't even measure right now because science is not.

Is not there yet.

Number six, the cause and effect.

Everything has its cause.

Everything has.

Has a cause, and it has an effect.

And number seven, the principle of gender.

Gender is everything.

Everything has its masculine and feminine principles.

Gender manifests on all planes.

There has to be a giver and a receiver.

And so, as you think about, you know, how the depth of which this precise book, a course in miracles.

Every word is precise.

Every word has its place.

I was just going to finish real quick, Daniel, by saying that the last principle, number 50, that the miracle compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in accord with what is true and rejecting what is out of accord as false.

And so if the universe is mind, if your existence is mind, then it's simply finding the zero point in mind, the beginner's mind, going all the way back to your original thoughts that.

That.

That came with you from your creator, and it's just removing everything else.

I totally concur.

I love that you brought out the hermetic principles, because for me, all these fragments, they are reaffirming the same.

The same truth.

I mean, I'm rereading the.

The.

The book of the Essenes, right?

These very amazing people for 500 years, you know, really knew how to live the good life and the practices alongside those.

And again, it affirms everything in this book.

So I, as much as I like to use the.

The course in miracles as a central part of My path or my, my practice.

That's why we also call this practicum, because we want to help people.

Me, you and anyone who wants to live this stuff.

Because there's one thing to read it, there's one thing to do the bits.

But how does it relate to real, the real life, so to say, real life, the illusory real life.

I always draw from other sources as well, but they just reaffirm and confirm that this is, this, this is a real path that you can walk.

There is a real direction.

And as the course so beautifully says, and once you have arrived at the so called destination that is inevitable for all of us to arrive at, no matter how long it might take.

At this point, the teaching, the teacher, the book, the lessons and time itself lose their meaning.

But they are important while you are still traveling through these dimensions.

And for me that the way it was written as a companion over a year that you can start and kick off at any point, you can cross read, you can always go anywhere.

But there is actually a daily lesson.

And for me I think that's useful.

I think useful for people who have maybe not practiced yet or have heard about the book.

It's a great invitation to just start wherever you are.

And you know that around the world, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions will be starting with you and reading the same lessons.

And that in itself is a bubbling consciousness that is growing and that I've, that I feel I can connect to.

If I do my daily lesson.

I know that many, many millions of people are doing that very same lesson because it's the lesson for the specific day of the calendar.

You know, so that's, that's really why we even said let's do practicum and, and let's, let's talk about how to bring this cause into our world even stronger in our world, my personal and yours, but the world around us.

You know, I'm looking, sorry, I'm looking for some great conclusive words from you, Aaron, for our first episode.

Some, some big revelation.

Have you got something?

Well, I don't, I don't have any, I don't have anything that comes, comes too quickly to mind other than to say that, you know, the ego comes up in this quite a bit, right?

And the ego comes up almost as if it's a devilish figure.

And you know, I, I think the, we talked about motivations.

Why are we doing a podcast?

What is the point of this?

Look, I'm not the podcasting type.

I'm going to say that up Front, But I'm going to get good at it because I believe in the mission of it.

And the mission is quite simple.

On our daily walk together in our shared life as humanity, we see a world that is coming undone.

And what we see outside of ourselves is the ma.

The.

The rise of the ego, really the rise of egoic leaders who are fully for themselves, who, who don't have that empathy card for humanity in the way that maybe we want to see it, right?

But this is, this is the illusion of the world.

It never, it never will be perfect.

It's not our job to fix the world.

It's our job to fix ourselves.

And the point of the course over and over again.

You are here to heal and you are here to comfort others.

That's it.

That's the only purpose of your being here, is to heal yourself through the grace of God and in your relationship with God and to understand that your relationship to your brothers and sisters is paramount to that healing.

And through forgiveness, you release others so that you're released.

Through healing, you heal others so that you're healed.

And in that way, you look upon a world without fear because you recognize the internal life that you are.

And that recognition can only be within you.

It's not going to come outside you.

And so as you look at the world, you just need to get to a place where you make the decision there's nothing more this world will teach me.

I've read every book, I've mastered every language, and it says this in one of the Gnostic gospels.

But have you come to put things in order within yourself?

And the only way I think humanity has a chance.

When you talk about now that we're at a place of actually creating technologies and, and its own, its own life, I mean, we are creating life with artificial intelligence in a way that we don't understand yet because we don't even understand ourselves.

So now we're at a place of absolute question on how we go forward with this new creation of ours that could consume us.

And we see leaders in a world that are out for their own consumption.

They are the spark of light, just like we are.

They have it within themselves.

It's not our job to fix them.

Our job is to fix ourselves.

And from there we create together feelings of peace, feelings of love, feelings of joy.

It starts with you, then it goes to your spouse or your partner, then it goes to your kids, then it goes to your colleagues, whoever it is.

And as that light spreads, that's how you push back on the darkness that is of the world.

That's how you transcend this world to another place, is by spreading that emotion, that this is the original power of the universe.

Love.

Amen.

Wow.

Dude.

Dude.

No, no, seriously, that was incredible.

Did you write that out before?

That sounded.

Seriously, that was amazing, man.

It felt like right out of a poetry book, you know?

Yeah.

This is.

This is the truth.

Speaking through you, my friend.

I.

The only.

The only tiny addition for me to make.

Not even an addition to what you said, but an additional context, us deciding to meet in this virtual space where from different continents, we speak here about the topic of God, of salvation.

It is written that when two or more come together in my name, that I. I will be there.

Right.

Right with you.

And today, this hour, with you.

And if anyone's listening, who will be listening in the future, know that the time is right for you to hear this.

This is the hour we spend contemplating who we are, where we come from, and what we're here to do.

And you said it very beautifully.

I look forward to rereading that in the transcript.

It was a beautiful end to our first session.

Aaron, thank you for your time today, man.

It's good to be with you, brother.

And as we get deeper, we're going to get it into the meaning of miracles next week.

So I appreciate the opportunity to get going on this.

And we're going to go through each of this and we're going to internalize and how we experience and how we can explain that with our limited self, hopefully with the spirit working through us to share that with others so that as they're on their journey, they can feel that they're not alone.