Podcast Episode 27: David Hoffmeister

Alison: Okay.

Jean: Are we rolling?

Alison: We are.

Jean: Are we recording?

Alison: Yes. We’re recording. I didn’t have the microphone in, I blew it, so here we go. We’re going to do it now.

Jean: We are. Okay. Great.

Alison: It’s gonna be excellent..we’re professionals.

Jean: Not. haha

Alison:  That should be our theme at the very end.

Alison: Hi everybody. Here’s insideWink podcast. You know what we were just talking about, which I think is great, that we’ve had the opportunity to talk to so many wonderful people.

Jean: We really have…what A blessing… Yeah.

Jean: We Just do this podcast as a hobby. And it has been such a benefit to Allison and I to  meet and talk with these amazing people. And we really hope our, audience get’s some, just get something beautiful and inspiring because you know, your life just gets more elevated, more enriched and more expansive when you just allow love in. Yeah. So, that’s the the message here.

Alison: Exactly Right.

Jean: And speaking about love….

Alison: Oh my gosh, this was such an exciting interview…David Hofmeister.

Jean: Who I love. Yeah yeah, I’ve been reading his books and he’s been to my home a couple of times. So he a mystic. He is a fantastic teacher on The Course in Miracles. And I just think he is so dedicated to communicating the truth about love and how love is real. And it’s a living vibration that each one of us embodies and how to exude it. And it starts with the mind. It starts with your thoughts.

Alison: Right. He’s so he’s really so powerful. And his books are amazing. And we were just so lucky to be able to talk to him. So here he is, David Hofmeister.

David: Hi.

Jean: Hi, David. It’s so great to see you.

David: It’s great to see you again. Wonderful to come on your podcast.

Jean: Thank you.

Alison: Yes. Thank you so much for being here.

Jean: This is such a treat.

David: Oh, beautiful. Beautiful. Well, it’s always a joy to come together. I always have such fond memories of our joinings and. And all the love and joy that we’ve shared with so many people over the years. So it’s it’s great to come together.

Jean: Yes, I was just. asking Alison. I said, oh, when was the last time David was  here, was here in Los Angeles that I remember seeing you and it’s it’s been some time…

David: Yea, it has been.  I was doing a lot of world travels and then I’ve kind of… well, I’ve formed a Course in Miracles monastery about 2010. So that was like yeah 13 years ago. And then,, I mean, yeah, all six continents and 44 countries and, but it’s more just working with a smaller community… You know, how Jesus kind of settled down with the apostles and the Women’s Corps and, you know, went way down into the mind to get clear of any debris. That’s kind of what I’m I’m doing. So I’m kind of got a devoted community around me that’s, you know, kind of a little mystical community now.

Alison: Wonderful.

Jean: I love that.. I think, um, David, can you talk about for people that don’t really know The Course in  Miracles.. What is it about the Course in Miracles that really hits it home for you?

David: Well, I think it is so direct. I think I’ve just studied so many spiritualities and many different metaphysics and spiritual pathways, but it’s, it’s just so direct and focused and it seems to be the, the whole package for we’ll call it mind training or coming to that state that Jesus called judge not ..just a state of non-judgment, where you have a, you have a metaphysical system or a theology, and then you have a workbook, which is basically your practical application to practice a lesson a day. And then you have a manual for teachers. And really it  is so direct with the practical application and bringing the those metaphysical ideas into a living experience, where you feel consistent peace and you, you laugh a lot, you feel joyful a lot, a lot blissful states of mind, and then they just seem to become more and more consistent as you don’t make any exceptions to the the lessons, to the practice of the day. So I would just say it’s kind of like a spiritual psychotherapy, that’s extremely practical, and it’s very metaphysical. And even though it uses like psychological terms and educational terms and Christian terms, it’s really points at a direction that that really doesn’t fit into the boxes of typical religions. It doesn’t fit into typical theologies that would involve sacrifice and suffering, those kind of theologies. It actually is taking us toward a state of pure innocence. So it’s I found it very helpful in my lifetime..

Jean: Me too. I have been studying it over over 30 years. And it is my go to. And there is so much, uh, there’s a huge spiritual smorgasbord out there, and, I really feel, David, that after Alex passed away three years ago, that I took a deeper dive into The Course In Miracles and like you said so beautifully, that it is about no compromise. You know, I can’ judge this, but that I can judge. And I think also, that it is possible to have peace and joy consistently, even though we’re in a human and physicality, we can perceive, always choose to perceive with innocence. It’s not always easy, but that’s where the rubber meets the road.

Alison: And could you tell me what your idea is of, no private thoughts?

David: Well, I would say, there’s a part in the early part of the workbook where Jesus says, you have no private thoughts, and yet that’s all that you’re aware of. So when we think of the typical stream of consciousness, of the human being, of the average human being, it’s a stream of timeline thoughts. Stream of consciousness, and basically the private thoughts, the characteristic of them are those of the ones that that have been judged and have been judged to need to be kept hidden. And that’s why they’re called private. Um, and yet when we talk to most anybody in Spiritual Journey, they talk about authenticity. They talk about being candid, being open, and particularly in relationships, when you expose these thoughts in a place of reverence and sacredness in a, in a state of, I’m just going to allow them up and, and allow the space to allow them up and give them over to the spirit or the Holy Spirit. Then that’s where the the release comes in. So it’s not like a strict rule. It’s not like. You know, for our communities, we have two guidelines. No private thoughts and no people pleasing. And that’s just be aware if you are hiding something or protecting something. Because when we protect it, we will either try to project it and see it in the world instead of our mind, or we’ll try to repress it and and push it down in the unconscious mind.

David: And both of those dynamics, projection and repression are egoic dynamics at keeping the separation belief system alive. So that’s why we we just encourage people to feel safe enough. I mean, use discernment. You know, you don’t. It’s not about sharing every thought you have with everyone you meet. But but use the dissernment. And when you feel a trusted friend or a someone that you can feel confident in and feel that they’re they’re sharing the same purpose of, of healing in the mind, then that allows a spaciousness for these thoughts to come up and and really be released. I think for most people, they they can obviously do this directly with their higher self, with the spirit within, but sometimes they feel like the certain thoughts are highly protected and they, they need maybe a mighty companion or a trusted friend to just say, you got a moment? Can I sit down with you and just tell you some of the thoughts that are going on in my mind, and somehow that helps to loosen it to, you know, it helps to take the pressure off of of those thoughts. You’re less likely to hide them if you can share them with a trusted friend.

Alison: Even if they’re about the trusted friend, or especially if they’re about the trusted friend.

David: Yeah, I think that’s what happens in relationships. I think that’s the context for healing that The Course in Miracle you know, will call on us to meditate and to still the mind. It actually uses relationships for healing instead of just kind of say, get away from certain people or go live in a cave or, you know, live in a tree house or something. It’s saying, no, use those relationships with the spirit to to accelerate your healing.

Alison: Love that. Yeah, I get I get stuck in this loop, David, of people pleasing and feeling like it’s almost like I feel when I read A Course of Miracles, and I’m very feeling very in tune with it, I think to myself, oh, I’m not even really here. There is no separation. We’re all one. And then that leads me to maybe go… So I don’t really have needs. I don’t really have needs. So my whole goal would be to please somebody else. And yet, when I hear you say no, people pleasing and a lot of the people we talk to really are saying no, be true to yourself. And sometimes that gets a challenging loop for me. Did that make sense?

David: Yeah, yeah. I think we’re so used to growing up with, with either like a focus on our personality self or a focus on others. And sometimes when we focus on other people, like obsessively, people say, well, you’re really like, extroverted and you, you know, you’re you’re so concerned about approval and what other people think. And then the flip side is when there’s such a focus on, we’ll say, the personality self. You know, some people would say that’s like narcissism and extreme selfishness. And then you get into almost a sense of like isolation and, and who cares about anyone or anything. And I think the course is really calling us to say there’s a state of mind where you can feel connected. And it’s not really personal, you know, mystical experiences. When we have those little glimpses, we we have a direct experience that, wow, it’s so vast. It’s so huge. I never knew it was so huge. So I think that’s pretty common, those loops. But it’s great that you notice them because that’s the first step in escaping them.

Alison: Uh huh. Thanks. Well, that makes me feel good. Thank you. That’s good.

Jean: Oh, well, David, can you please shed some light on the difference between the average way of forgiving and what Jesus talks about forgiveness in The Course of Miracles. Because it’s beautiful. Very liberating. Not always, what we think, so that would be great.

David: Yeah, well, I think typical forgiveness has it’s been practiced and talked about throughout the centuries. Is very much focused on there is a behavior that is judged as a wrongdoing. Either it’s a it’s a behavior of a mission, like you should have done something that you didn’t do or that you did something that you shouldn’t have done. So it’s very personal. It’s as if the error is in the behavior, it’s in the action, and then you have to acknowledge it. But it’s still very much of a personal forgiveness. It’s like one person forgiving another person, one person who perceived they’ve been wronged, another person who seems to be the one who perpetrated the the crime or did something wrong. And so it’s a very personal sense. So in that sense, it’s acknowledging something wrong has been done. And then an attempt to let that go, to overlook it, to say, I’m going to give you a free pass here, I’m not going to hold it against you. Whereas with A Course in Miracles, it’s saying you have to forgive your brother, your sister for what they have not done in Truth. Being a purely spiritual being. Whatever behaviors have been held against them is part of a misperception of their identity. It’s like saying, you’re not spirit and and you’ve done something, and I’m interpreting a sense of abuse or victimization. I’m interpreting a mistreatment.

David: And the grievance is arising from the interpretation of the grievance. So we look at somebody like Gandhi, you know, who was always on to non-violence. And the truest nonviolent state is a state of forgiveness, where you you come to a higher interpretation of yourself, of your brothers and sisters and of the whole world. And from this higher interpretation, you actually see from above, from above the battleground that there there was no, there was no grievance, there was no trespass. There was it was a misperception. It wasn’t something that was actually real and true. It was just a misperception. And then you you let it go. So forgiveness in this sense,  a Course in Miracles sense,  is always a gift to yourself, meaning to your mind. You’re just releasing judgments and misinterpretations from your mind and coming back to this pristine presence. That is how we were created. The I am Presence. And as we move into I-am-ness then of course, Jesus is a good example of that. Before Abraham was I am. Look at the grammar of that sentence,  before Abraham was I am. He’s he’s actually saying that when you forgive you, you go prior to the belief in the offense, you go, you go into this pristine state where all is one, all is connected, all is unified. And of course, that’s  the ultimate goal is to remember our love, our oneness, our spirit.

Jean: That’s beautiful.

Alison: That is beautiful. I think when you say that some of the people that we’ve talked to, have the perception that they’ve experienced something heinous and they’ve had really, on an egoic sense, some very traumatic experiences of abuse…. One mother’s child was in a shooting and didn’t survive. So when when I hear you say that, I want to know that  is so. And yet, I wonder what they would say? Do you know..?? And what do you do with that sort of thing? Like if a woman’s being literally physically abused by something,  the challenge there for them to say, I’m rising above it and it’s not really happening, I think must be very difficult?

David: Yeah. I think the biggest thing that people have to face on the spiritual journey is, is we’ll just call it even definitions.  Because when we take what our five senses present to us as a fact, then right away, it gets difficult immediately, because Jesus is teaching us in The Course that perception is a mirror, not a fact. It’s giving meaning to something like that’s the the second lesson in the workbook– “I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me.” So, when you go for healing, you have to start to realize that when I perceive anything– abuse, neglect, mistreatment in any shape, in any form, could be something that’s happening to a child. Could be the Holocaust, could be, you know, any scale. It could be on a global scale like, World War one or World War two…and it could be something like even somebody who frowns at you, you’re going through life la la la la, you’re having a happy day. And then around the corner and then you get a look and a frown and then that kind of throws you off. Your day is not so happy when you see the frown, but that’s a perception, that’s an interpretation. So what I work with people on is, is basically saying, don’t try to deny the body, don’t try to deny what you’re perceiving. Your five senses were  made up by the ego to keep you asleep, to put a veil of images. You know, like the Bible said, “hold no graven images for the Lord thy God.” Well, he wasn’t just talking about gold and totem poles. He was talking about the whole cosmic image thing that we’re dealing with, you know, the whole cosmos. But but what it is, once you start to see, wow, I’m never reacting to what I’m perceiving with the five senses. I’m reacting to what my mind is interpreting ABOUT what’s happening, what what the five senses are showing me. So A Course In Miracles is just saying, you always have a choice of your interpretation. You can always choose to line up with the Holy Spirit, with your higher self and intuition in any moment, no matter what the situation is. You always have that option, and it takes so much mind training to do that. It’s not like we’re trying to gloss over anything we’re saying, wow, this is a lifelong journey of training your mind to that higher perspective to say, help me see it with you, Spirit.  Show it to me through your eyes. So we’re not trying to deny what we’re perceiving, but we are saying that that we want to train ourselves on how to interpret what we’re seeing. So for me, it was one thing to read The Course, I read it for like, I read it for like an average of eight hours a day for like two and a half years. And then when I really started traveling and following intuition and guidance and going to all these countries, some of the countries, I didn’t even speak the languages…

David: It was a walk of trust. I didn’t know how I was going to have my next meal or where I was going to sleep, but what it did was, it really helped me focus on my interpretations. What am I judging?  Where am I coming up with fearful interpretations and then being willing to release them and just trust that everything was going to work out? And so, it’s not about trying to reach people and basically say that your perception or your belief that you’ve been harmed is the problem. It’s really bringing it back to your own mind and, and saying, If I’m not peaceful, then I need to look at at my interpretations and judgments and hand them over. So when I traveled, basically, I kept hearing Jesus telling me over and over, it’s your lesson, It’s your lesson… I’d say, but but yeah, yeah.. It’s your lesson. It was like a broken record. It’s your lesson.  Is it ever not my lesson? No.  It’s always your lesson. And that actually helps you speed up with the forgiveness, because then you’re not trying to figure out what somebody else should have done or shouldn’t have done, or should have said or shouldn’t have said you. You’re inner directed that way and I think that helps you take responsibility for your state of mind.

Alison: It’s so funny you brought up that up..the first time I did the workbook, I had such a hard time with that lesson about looking at a picture of my children and thinking like, you know, when it says, look around the room. And I would look everywhere except on the bureau. I’d be like, yeah, that lamp. Okay, that thing. And then, it took the second and third time to be able to look at a picture of something that I thought was so meaningful And let it know that that’s just my perception that I remember that that makes me laugh that you brought that up because that was hard.

David: Yeah, yeah…the first time doing that lesson, everyone remember that..yea. hah

Alison: Looking everywhere else. Oh, shoes. Okay. You know this that, but not you know.

Jean: I think David, you gave a great story of a nun, doing A Course In Miracles… And she says, okay, the habit doesn’t mean anything, and this bracelet doesn’t mean anything, but the statue of Jesus on the table , well that does mean something… hahah

David: Yeah, just skip over that one.

Jean: Right.

David: That’s just assume to be real.

Alison: Yeah. David, living in your community with these people, that sounds so wonderful… Does conflict ever arise?

David: Oh yeah. I think when you start to see the depth of how deep this ego belief system is…. somebody recently asked me that. They said, do you ever have any conflict in the community? I said, oh, it comes up on a daily basis because we have a number of people. I think by the time we all come together into one place, it’s maybe around 40 people or so,  but basically it’s not just with within the community, of course, you have interactions with, with neighbors, with at grocery stores or at laundromats or, you know, at the market or whatever. And these things are just the unconscious darkness coming up for healing release. So, yeah, I think a lot of times people try to idealize it. And, and there is a strong focus on forgiveness because it’s a very strong shared purpose. But I think when you have a shared purpose, then the unconscious darkness can come up even faster. It can be more accelerated. So instead of being just la dee da dee da dee da, it’s it’s can get very intense. But the willingness to choose again, the willingness to choose the miracle gets stronger and stronger.

Jean: Yeah. I love that you said that. Choose again because, I think Jesus says In the Course, I’m not sure David, the ego speaks first and loudest?

David: Yes, yes.

Jean: So you get that hit.  And then it’s like, if you’re advanced, just go, whoa… That was that was a thought. And to pause. Take a breath. And if you are a Course in Miracles student, right away you’re like– Okay, this is coming from my mind, my interpretation. What’s going on here?  Otherwise most people just move into– Hey, what are you doing… and there’s conflict..,

David: Defensiveness.

Jean: So I like that you say shared purpose. Because I know if I’m working on my healing of my mind. And it’s a shared purpose. And I can share with Allison. Oh, this is what came up. And I feel so yucky that this came up.  Alison is is a great companion for me. And we’re so blessed to have a friendship that we can celebrate, you know, the healing that we’re both going through and support each other.

Alison: That’s right, that’s right. I had a question about…I don’t know how to really put this, so that I don’t seem stupid to you, but there’s a perception, right? There’s a judgment.  When someone gets sick, what is that? And did they?.. You know, we hear two schools of thought– stuff happens and God and Forgiveness and Love gives you a way of healing, of dealing with it and healing through it. And you create everything. Everything. So almost sick mind, sick body. Could you explain what you think of that?

David: Yeah. I think well, the context for looking at that is that the workbook of A Course in Miracles is, is really focused on helping there be a recognition or a realization between what’s perceived as an inner world of thoughts and beliefs and an external world. So when the question comes in about internal states of mind or internal sickness, unhappiness, jealousy, envy, whatever sadness and external sickness which can seem like a cancer or heart disease, you know, a broken leg, so on and so forth, that the mind training of A Course in Miracles is designed to bring about a realization that my thoughts are images I have made, and that what seems to be an internal world of thought, cognition and thinking, and an external world of images are actually identical. That there is no gap between that internal and external. There is no gap between the observer and the observed, or the subject and the object. They become completely unified in this unified state of awareness. And that’s where the healing is. So healing is really it seems to be a process in time, but it’s actually just the state of being, where you come back and you go, Ah, and you, you feel the connectedness. And in that connectedness, that unified awareness is the healing. So when we… There’s a great line in the course of miracles that says, where Jesus says, “The mind was sick,that thought the body could be sick.” That’s a very deep line. The mind WAS sick. There’s the past tense word. The mind WAS sick. The thought the body could be sick.

David: So what he’s teaching us there, is sickness is a wrong minded perception. He’s basically teaching us there’s two-   a split mind, which is what the separation is. The split mind… Ego and spirit. He calls wrong mindedness and right mindedness. Right mindedness sees that everything is in the mind, and all is whole and all is complete and all is well. Wrong mindedness fragments the world into pieces and then it tries to take a piece, Let’s say this pen and it tries to say, oh, this pen is today is showing symptoms, you see. It’s just first of all, it’s generated a pen apart from other images. And now it’s saying that the image, we’ll say the body having symptoms, is is how the world defines sickness. And of course, our medical model then would go into trying to study what’s wrong, what’s what’s going on internally. Is it cancer? Is it, you know, is it a virus? Is it the flu? Is what is it? So basically, it comes back to what I was talking about earlier, is you start to realize, that what needs to be healed is just perception. You want unified holistic perception instead of fragmented perception. And when you already perceive a sickness as being, we’ll say in a body or having to do with symptoms, that’s a wrong minded perception. And it’s always healed through a miracle, of a holistic way of looking at the world. So the key thing is to start to realize is that there is no world apart from the perceiver.

David: There’s a workbook lesson 132 where Jesus is saying, “There is no world apart from what you think.” And then he actually goes even one step further and says, “there is no world.” It’s a perceptual hallucination based on fragmentation. But the way we heal it, is we have to see it in a holistic way. And so Jesus just saw the world in a holistic way. And, the dead rose up, and the blind could see, and the lame could walk. Those are symbols. But when people go, wow, Jesus, raised the dead and healed the sick. And I say, well, even with Lazarus, yes, Lazarus was his friend. He raised him. He literally called him out of the the grave. He said, “Lazarus, come forth.” But I said, what you don’t read around in the Bible is that, even though Lazarus came out for Jesus that day with Mary and Martha his sisters there, later on he died. He died again. You see, nobody talks about that… Oh, Jesus rose him from the dead, and then he died again.  Because bodies come and go. Symptoms come and go. But it’s the holistic perception that is really what the healing is. So it just shows it’s not really ever about the symptoms. It’s about what am I thinking and what interpretation am I giving to the world? Is it a holistic, miraculous perception or is it a fragmented perception? And that’s the key. That’s the key right there.

Alison: Okay.

Alison: So do you think Covid the pandemic was really saying something about where as a collective, the world’s energies are?  Or do you think, it was like, well, there is no individual. But like what did you what did you make of that? That we all lived through that..that  we went through that? Or was it just like another.. that’s just our perception?

David: Yeah. For me, it was it was just okay, I can just flow through this in a guided way and follow my intuition like I would with anything else. Even if a war breaks out in the Middle East, even if a pandemic seems to sweep across the globe, I still am responsible for my interpretations and my perceptions. And then you start to see, it’s really about following the guidance, because there were people, obviously, that felt to do a little bit of traveling if they could, if they weren’t in lockdown and then they had to be guided. Sometimes they had to have a little vaccine card to get into a country, or you start to see they’re all just symbols, so you don’t jump on a bandwagon and say, oh, this is good, or this is bad, or this is evil and this is good. You know, you just start to say, I’m going to just keep flowing with my inner guidance here and let the spirit use the symbols for me to extend love wherever I go. And it takes it away from the pandemic being like a thing because there was the Spanish flu, you know, right at the turn of the century there there have been regional conflicts, world wars, even during the World war. And Fatima, you know, Mother Mary appears in Fatima to these three children and basically tells the children, “pray!” Jesus and Mary are saying, please pray…there’s there’s a war going on here. And please, please use your mind, the power of your mind to to come into peace and radiate that peace. So to me, I don’t see it so much in terms of the specific things that happen. It’s more just, okay, I need to follow my guidance. That’s what’s here. And now for me.

Alison: Thank you for that… That’s great.

Jean: Yeah. I also think that that following your guidance is so beautiful because you have to be still and listen to  that still small voice. And also, you’re not giving your power away. You know wha might be right for Alison, might not be right for me. I was guided to travel to help my mother in New York. So, you know, you were not guided to travel during the pandemic, you know, and  I think that really underscores the fact that we are all of God, that that we all have our innate divinity, sovereignty, and of, The Course In Miracles honors that.

David: Yeah, yeah, that the curriculum is highly individualized. And of course, because of that, that the guidance has to be highly individualized.  While we believe in separate individuals, then we need a practical way to reach us spirit, and that is through inner guidance and intuition. And then as we keep practicing, we can go into vast mystical experiences which transcend the personal and give us a glimpse that there’s something more than this mask, than this little suit of flesh. There’s something much greater. But we have to come toward that. And I like how Jesus says, you know, you have to go through the darkness to the light. And he does tell us, he says, bring the darkness in your mind to the light within. He’s not really teaching us to spiritualize matter. Even though we have a whole history of trying to spiritualize sacred rivers, sacred people, you know, sacred ceremonies, you know, we always try to bring the oneness into the form and say, oh, this is sacred. And then wars break out over sacred temples.

David:  All this belongs to the Muslims? No, it belongs to the Jews. You know, the when we try to spiritualize matter, we’re going in the wrong direction. Jesus is saying, bring your beliefs and your concepts and your false ideas to the light and they will disappear. Don’t try to bring the light into the darkness. Bring the darkness to the light. So if there’s one thing that anyone gets from the course, if they just got that, yeah, that would be a great practice. Then they can just live an intuitive life and practice bringing the darkness to  the Light, you know, and and wake up. Yeah.

Jean: Right. That’s so funny you say that, David, when Alex and I took our  last family trip..Well, second to last family trip.. we went to Jerusalem. And we were in the Old City and following where Jesus, you know, the sign of the cross, right? And then someone would say, well, over here is where the Greek Orthodox feel he was buried. But over there is where the Israelites felt he was buried.

David: Competing death sites, burial sites.

David: Well, sounds like you had some fun. That’s the best part. When you can go and have a good laugh, right? Oh, my God, this is ridiculous.

Alison: Yeah.

Jean: David, one of the things I really love, how you teach A Course in Miracles, because it can be a little intellectual, which I do like that part. But you also have a beautiful way of making it fun by showing movies.  And taking a movie, breaking it down and showing how the ego is, weaving its way through. That’s such a great way. Are you finding that to be still what you’re doing? Because you did that once at my home.  And I’ve seen you do a few online. I saw you do, Harry met Sally and…

David: Yeah.

Alison: Any good movies lately?

David: I have, I came down here to Mexico and I started to get this intuitive feeling that I was to go see this movie, but it wasn’t here. And then when it came, it was dubbed into Spanish, which doesn’t help me because I don’t know Spanish. So I waited patiently a few days, and then it was in English with Spanish subtitles, and it was called, Hypnosis with Ben Affleck, Ben Affleck in Hypnosis. And it was such… I went to the movie theater with three friends and it was so mystical.  We could barely walk when we were leaving. We  kind of went into such a state of mind, because it was all.. Speaking about a child being abducted or kidnapped, a father’s love for his child, the pursuit of trying to to find the child. You know, it was it had all the action adventure. But but as it as the movie moved along, it brought in the the topic of hypnosis, of the power of the mind and that that what was perceived through the senses is, is a distortion or deception, and that hypnosis can be used to bring artificial constructs to make it seem as if things are happening and seem as if things are a certain way. So it was, you know, using the whole idea of hypnosis. And as he went deeper into it, we started to realize that the main character starts to realize he has powers of the mind that he’s shocked and surprised about, and the woman that he meets  also does.

David: And then it goes all the way. It goes all the way to the daughter that he believes was taken. She ends up having to have this extremely powerful mind. And it’s a reunification of the family scene of the father, the mother and the daughter at the end, through the the daughter’s powerful mind of her wish for connection, her wish to go past the distortions, brings everybody really together, brings the family back together, even through the power of her mind. But she was very, she was young when she was taken, and then she some years passed, a few years passed, and then her powers, Psychic powers. So it gets into not only telepathy, which is kind of reading people’s thoughts, but it gets more into psychokinesis, too, which is people talk about moving objects with the power of their mind. There was one time when I was reading this book that Ken Wabnik wrote called Absence from Felicity, and Helen Schucman, the scribe of A Course of Miracles, was just pondering one day she was pondering with Jesus.. Like she said, I don’t understand where astrology meets with the power of the mind?

David: She said, what does the the movements of the planets and the spheres have to do with the lives of men and women and children on the planet? How how are the the movements of the planets tied in with the movements and the interactions of human beings? And Jesus said, well, your mind is so powerful. It’s moving all those 6 billion people, and behind it it’s moving all the spheres and stars in direct proportion. I just, I rolled off the bed when I read that, I just fell on the floor. I was like, oh my God, the mind is that powerful. And when it believes in the ego, it projects a world and it moves the spheres and the people in very much a synchronized way. So that’s why astrology, astronomy correlates with the lives of men and women. It’s because the mind underneath.. And this movie Hypnosis really had that feeling. Toward the end, you could start to see that the bodies were all moved around and all the the circumstances were just like movie sets that the mind had set up, and it had to escape from this interpretation of them being real. So it turned them to be extremely deep movie. I probably could watch it five times and do commentary on it five different times. It was so good.

Alison: Let’s watch.

Jean:  Yeah.

Alison: Thank you. Thank you so much for that.

Jean: David, do you have, after all these beautiful years of you teaching and Being Love, do you have a favorite Course in Miracles line or lesson that you love, or that you always go to? 

David: I think for years, the one workbook lesson that I would just kind of go back to and I even I made a YouTube video of it. It’s called, “I Rest in God.” And it’s so mystical and deep that a lot of people tune in and I think they just watch that, that meditation I did on that one because it was so helpful. So and of course, the introduction of the course, “Nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists, herein lies the peace of God”, that is so powerful, because it just pulls you inward, toward the Light, away from these imaginings like imaginations of of fear and terror, just takes you into the to that which cannot be threatened to our spiritual reality. So I always loved the the introduction too.

Jean: Beautiful. I love that too. I will share with you that when Alex made his transition, I was there with him and I said that very prayer.

David: Oh, beautiful. That’s beautiful. Yeah, that’s so sweet. So what a beautiful idea to share prayer. Yeah. That’s beautiful.

Alison: Well, thank you so much. You’ve been such a treat.

Jean:  I have a couple of your books, David. But I want to just let you know that  this book that you wrote, Awakening through a Course of Miracles”… it really read me. I woke up, it called me every morning, and it was really so helpful. And your life has been such a blessing to my life and I really appreciate you.

David: Oh.

David: Thank you. And it’s just you’ve been such a blessing in my life. And  it was just beautiful to meet you both here in this way, with such a beautiful topic of , The Course in Miracles and healing and generosity and happiness, wanting to extend that with everything and everyone. So that’s that’s a very high calling. It’s fun to talk about.

Alison: Thank you so much. Yeah.

Jean: Anything, You know, David,  if you would like to say anything to close out and also David you if you’re in LA, I would love to see you and watch a movie ..

David: Great. Yeah.

David: Get put on a movie we can rent… Rent a movie or download a movie and have a good time..

David: Right now, It’s kind of like I’m down in Mexico, but I’m going to Mexico City on the 25th, I think it is, and down over to Monterrey on the 18th. But so I’m, I’m doing a couple things this month that I haven’t done for quite a while, which is just walk into a big metropolitan city and, and just open up and show going to show a movie, both like an all day thing with a movie in the evening. So that’s just a great joy for me, because I really love to to be there and just feel the questions and interact with everybody. And so it’s kind of a treat for me to kind of get out and be amongst the people and have good Spanish translators with me. So can I can survive. That helps.

Alison: That’s funny. That’s so great. I think that sounds like that would be so much fun.

David: Yeah, I’m really excited. I’m looking forward to it because it’s I just like to be out there among the people and, and and it’s like a revival. We they share their emotions and the tears and we, you know, we’re all in the healing energy, the healing vibe and and that love and connectedness. And I love that. Yeah.

Alison: Well, you are that…Just talking to. I feel like talking to you, I feel like I’m in a nice warm bath. Very comforting and beautiful.

David: Oh that’s beautiful I love it. That’s that’s my function to be the Light of the world. So, just let it come through me, you know, that’s… I try to just let it come through.

Alison: Yeah. And when you were talking about Jesus earlier, I don’t know if you could see it, all of a sudden, your screen, all these balloons went up..

David: I did- I don’t know how that that happens to me occasionally now. And I’m kind of pleasantly surprised, but I think that’s that’s a nice special effects -that I’m not planning.

Alison: Jesus liked what you were saying. Yeah.

Alison: He sent the party.

David: That’s it… Balloons like a big like a big party.

Alison: That’s right. Thank you so much, David.

David: Yeah. Thank you.

Alison: Have fun in Mexico City.

David: Yeah, I will, I will.

David: Beautiful. God bless you. If I get to LA, I will definitely make contact. Okay.

Jean: Great. Bye. Bye bye. Thank you for everything.

David: Oh, you’re so welcome.

Alison: So what did you think, Jean?

Jean: Well, you know, he hits it out of the ballpark. He’s just so clear about the mission of A Course in Miracles — which is forgiveness and being non judgmental.

Alison: And I love the fact that he talked about the private thoughts.

Jean: Yes. And people pleasing.

Alison: Right. People pleasing. Yeah.

Jean: I think it’s hard. It’s hard even to recognize if you’re a people pleaser and it takes– you have to really develop self awareness to go, wow, did I give my power away? There was I, why did I do that? And it takes, I think, courage sometimes to to look at that and actually to change it. And because we don’t want to disappoint people, especially people we love.

Alison: Right. You don’t want to disappoint them. And sometimes we act not in our best interest, you know, not to disappoint somebody else. And there’s really a balance that we can achieve. And I love that he talks so much about forgiveness and that you the it’s your it’s your perspective. It’s your perception, you know, and and love and that we’re all really connected, you know. Yeah. Truly. It’s so and right now in the world I love hearing that.

Jean: Very much so. And he talks, like when he says, you know, we we join together right.. When the because there’s only one mind. It looks like it looks like there’s what 7.5 billion or something. I don’t even know the number but it’s we’re really one. So there are no private thoughts. And certainly we all have thoughts and things in our life. But inviting the power of love to shift your perception of a situation and is so powerful, and you can feel that if you’re feeling off in your day, if you’re feeling resentful or blame, shame, regret, really take a moment and try to acknowledge what you’re thinking about without judgment. Give yourself that gift too and invite in your angels or the Holy Spirit you know. Just invite them in some help to help shift your perception..

Alison:  And scene.

Jean: Thank you.

Alison: That was beautiful, Jean. I think that is so true. That’s a great that’s a great way to put it. Just let love shift the perception. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Well that’s a good takeaway.

Jean: On that happy note. Yeah.

Alison: Thank you. Thank you so much for joining in. And we hope you enjoyed David Hofmeister.