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I do want to ask you by what A Course in Miracles means by Holy Relationship. In one single area of the book it covers "entering the ark" together, and it almost sounds like you'll need another specific person to be able to awaken a course in miracles youtube. Therefore, I do believe I approach each new person with the expectation that maybe THIS could be the relationship that reflects enlightenment to me, and I in their mind! Am I taking this too literally? Or do you really need to have another to help you awaken?

I appreciate your time so much and many thanks for the help to me and others. I many thanks and I thank God for you. Namaste.

David Hoffmeister: Thanks for the openness and your willingness to appear deeply at what is underneath these topics and issues. A Course in Miracles teaches that the split mind contains both the problem (the ego) and the Solution (the Holy Spirit). When they are brought together, only One remains.

Your body and the planet are always the focus of ego's perspective, for this seeks to create real problems and struggles on the planet and to avoid the inner Healing Correction of the Holy Spirit. The ego's distorted world is the product of identity confusion, an outpicturing of the belief that it is possible to create an identity which God did not create. The ego is this identity problem and it had been Answered or forgiven by the Holy Spirit the instant it did actually arise. This one problem could be described being an authority problem or perhaps a confusion in who's the writer of Reality. The mind that believes in the truth of the time-space cosmos has a control issue, for this believes so it can make itself. This ego mind also thinks it's in competition with God, although that is pushed out of conscious awareness. This unconscious ego thought system is exposed in the A Course in Miracles Workbook lessons, and Lesson 13 contains a great example of the unveiling:

"A meaningless world engenders fear because I do believe I'm in competition with God."

This is the beginning of training your brain to forgive, for the focus is cut back to your brain, back once again to thinking, and removed from your body and the world. Anorexia, weight issues, body image issues, and interpersonal relationship issues are types of projection, of seeing the problem where it's not: in the world. The mind cannot tolerate the belief in a war with God, so this belief is pushed out of awareness. The deep-seated control issue such a belief entails is then projected to your body and the world. Weight control, like any attempt to regulate the script or your body, is an effort to regulate the past. The Holy Spirit teaches that yesteryear can only be forgiven or released or regarded as false—not fixed or controlled or changed.

Exactly the same ego dynamic is underneath interpersonal relationship struggles of power and control, of wanting to correct or change an individual or perhaps a self-image. Personal relationships may appear to sail happily along for awhile, the make-believe self-concept IS the personal perspective and thus is always on shaky ground. Decisions are continuous. The Holy Spirit is just a decision. The ego is just a decision. Atonement is your decision that ends all decisions, an acceptance of the changelessness of Mind. The ego is your decision to think that your brain may be separate from God. Once your brain believed so it had separated and built this time-space world, this time-space world of bodies became its substitute identity, as it believed it had thrown away the Kingdom of Heaven. The world was created up instead identity. The sleeping mind is split on your decision of identity. The Holy Spirit says, "This world isn't Identity. This world is definitely an illusion." And thus the Holy Spirit reminds your brain constantly, "This world isn't your Home. This world isn't your Identity. This world isn't real." As the mind is split it's hearing another voice (the ego) that's saying: "You've done it. You've separated from God. You'd better make the most effective of it and find something of the planet to spot with. You are able to never go back for God will punish you."

Thought-form associations seem becoming a substitute identity. The ego mind appears to be identified with your body, with family, with environments that appear to surround it (i.e., I'm an American, Japanese, I'm male, I'm female, I'm from a wealthy family, from a poor family, I'm Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, etc.) All of these are thought-form associations. And these seeming other persons and places surrounding the small personal self are part of the construction. The mind is quite shaky about any of it small identity, this small self, this little me. So the small me is shaky, and it appears as though other persons give the small me reality and importance (i.e., you're my son, my daughter, you're my boss, you're a loving father, etc.) and all the various things that these images seem to be telling this little me seem to be really important. Praise thus seems essential (i.e., you're an individual and you're a good one!).

Praise and acceptance from others SEEM to stabilize this very shaky thing (i.e., you're a good lover, you're a good provider, you're great with the youngsters, you've a fine intellect, you've such a heart, you help serve so many other folks, you're a good team-player, on and on). This aspect of the self-concept says that you are an individual and you've many of these positive attributes that really cause you to a valuable and worthy person, that make you be noticeable above the crowd. You're not just anyone—you're somebody special. The flip side is criticism, which directly reflects the shaky sense of self. Criticism will be: you're much less great as you think you're, you're not such a good team player, such a good provider, so good in bed—all the stuff which can be taken as insults to the personal self-concept). That's the flip side of the strokes. To this ego self-concept that believes both parties (the positive and negative) of thinking are real, the Holy Spirit is perceived as a good threat, for the Holy Spirit contributes to the experience of forgiveness or the realization that none of the tiny images perceived as separate have any reality.

Once the criticism seems to come, the ego attempts a substitution. It thinks, "I don't need this. I'll go elsewhere and start other relationships with people who are able to appreciate my talents and skills and abilities, appreciate my personhood. I'll avoid those negative influences on the planet and those negative people. I'll find another person or join a group where people are like-minded and overlook the remaining world. These new people will like me and stroke me and praise me." The attempt at substitution is an effort to steadfastly keep up a sense of specialness, a sense of separation, a sense of individuality (a private mind with private thoughts). Those attempts are special love relationships. They appear to reinforce worth and value and to validate personhood. And they provide a false witness for clinging to the ego as identity. To the ego, past associations serve to give personhood some sense of stability and consistency and value. Yet, the Holy Spirit implies that past associations offer nothing of value, for they certainly were made by the ego to deny the reality of God's Love.

Holy relationship emphasizes and reflects Content (right-minded thinking) and posseses an awareness of the meaninglessness of form. As the ego's believed relationships will seem to be specific, yet each one of these will present a way to release the belief in specifics. Divine Mind is Abstract and Universal. Forgiveness could be the bridge to the remembrance of Christ and God, Divine Abstraction. Thus the Holy Spirit teaches in A Course in Miracles:

"When you meet anyone, remember it is just a holy encounter. As you see him you will dsicover yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself. As you consider him you will consider yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will discover yourself or lose yourself. Whenever two Sons of God meet, they are given another chance at salvation. Do not leave anyone without giving salvation to him and receiving it yourself. For I'm always there with you, in remembrance of you.