What Is My Spirit Given Function?

Spiritual Practice | Atonement, Body Issues, Desire, Divine Providence, Ego, Fear, Food Preferences, Guidance, Guilt, Health, Holy Instant, Integrity, Intuition, Jesus, Judgment, Living in Community, Miracles, Movie-Watching, Perception, Prayer, Projection, Purpose, Quantum, Reciprocity, Roles, Sacrifice, Series Tabula Rasa Online Retreat My Spirit Given Function, Sickness, Signs and Symbols, Spontaneity, Time and Space, Trust, with Friends

Opening Session – “My Spirit Given Function” Online Retreat—What Is My Spirit Given Function?

Find your Spirit-given function with David Hoffmeister and enjoy some of the sweet interactions between David and the retreat participants as they explore body issues and diet, devoting life to the awakening journey, following Spirit instead of guilt, and living in divine providence as a collaborator with the Holy Spirit!

Download “Opening Session – ‘My Spirit Given Function’ Online Retreat”

Gold Nugget:

“If you want to remember the two sneaky things that the ego uses, repression and projection. What it will do and what it does is it takes all the darkness that’s in the mind from the belief in separation from God, and it packs it down very tight into the unconscious mind. Why is that such a defense against the truth is because if you feel extremely guilty and extremely hurt and angry, but it’s pushed down into the basement of your mind and you close the door, and you say, I do not ever want to see this again. I am not going down there. I’m just going to close the door and lock it. And thank you very much, unconscious mind. That’s the last we’ll be hearing from you. But the thing is, it does break through into conscious awareness sometimes, in times when we aren’t even expecting it. We don’t even think there’s anything going wrong in our worldly life, and all of a sudden, darkness can come shooting up from the depths below.

And the second thing that the ego does to keep you from knowing the truth is called projection, so Lesson 132 of A Course in Miracles, Jesus says, ‘There is no world!’ W-132.6:2 Period. He starts off soft. To start off, he says there’s no world apart from what you think. And then he goes there is no world. Period. There’s no comma there. There’s nothing after that. There is no world. So the entire time-space cosmos is a projection of the ego. Obviously it’s not eternal. We know that even the stars in the sky, the sun and the stars, they’re just burning gases. They’re gonna burn out. We know that nothing in time and space lasts forever. There’s nothing eternal about time and space. But it is a projection of guilt. So by repressing it and keeping it from awareness and projecting a world smoke screen, like a movie screen to keep you distracted, whereby the screen has everything that you believe in, as if it’s outside of you. Now, it is as if you’re just this little teeny person, and there’s this vast world of time and space, surrounding the person, and the ego is not telling you that the entire thing is a projection of your mind. That’s why when you start to follow the Spirit, you really need discernment about taking your steps inward because the ego will always use things in form to distract you from knowing who you are. It’s a giant menagerie of distractions!”

Recorded at Tabula Rasa Online Retreat My Spirit Given Function on July 1, 2022

I Taught the World to Teach Me

I Taught the World to Teach Me – In this session, David Hoffmeister emphasizes the importance of loyalty to the Spirit, the inner teacher, over personal desires and external opinions. This loyalty stems from truth and a deep connection with the Holy Spirit, not the ego’s demands. David shares parables of taking full responsibility for our state of mind by recognizing that we taught the world to teach us. By keeping this empowering thought in mind, it’s possible to remember that we don’t need to wait for externals to choose to be happy.

Coming Together with the Purpose of Healing

Coming Together with the Purpose of Healing – David Hoffmeister explores the perceptual problem, which pertains to the belief that the subject and the object are different, that the observer is different from the observed, and that the personality-self is different from the world that surrounds it. When we see an issue in the world, it really is just a split in the mind. This belief can result in significant problems such as conflict, climate change, and hunger, all of which can be traced back to the division within the mind. “Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved,” (W-79) and “Let me recognize my problems have been solved.” W-80 By examining the projected world, we often fail to identify the core problem because it manifests in many forms. You may resolve a few problems today, only to encounter more tomorrow. Therefore, the key lies in our perspective, which stems from our interpretation.

Relax, Step Back, and Unwind from the World

Relax, Step Back, and Unwind from the World – David Hoffmeister shares about the importance of placing the future in God’s hands, a concept that requires enormous trust. This trust is crucial as we have been conditioned to learn the past and plan the future. Trust is the foundation of a teacher of God and allows us to relax and feel divine ease. During this profound talk, David also gives an overview of the very first Strawberry Fields Festival in 2009. Jesus tells us to go from nightmares to waking with a transition between happy dreams and gentle waking. This process helps us feel softer and gentler, making the struggle and challenge easier. Enjoy this deep discussion with the participants that goes deep and yet fun.

Opening to Deeper Prayer

Opening to Deeper Prayer – David Hoffmeister begins this 4-day Japan retreat by exploring the concept of undoing the self-concept—a conditioned expectation that obstructs our understanding of the world. The ego arises from the mind’s pursuit of self-improvement, crafting illusory goals that keep the mind preoccupied and detached from its boundless nature. The ego’s game is endless, as it neither begins nor concludes. The purpose of our practice is to abandon the pursuit of temporal goals and relinquish the false identity—the mask of the ego. In doing so, we experience the mind’s all-encompassing nature, recognizing that the world, society, and everything once perceived as external are within the mind. As the mind reaches a state of rest, the external world reflects this peace, becoming more harmonious.

A Path of Gentle Letting Go

A Path of Gentle Letting Go – In this session, David Hoffmeister speaks about Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, focusing on self-actualization as the top goal. This concept is based on the Greek belief that ‘know thyself’ is the ultimate goal of human development. The ego attempts to deny this through hypnotism, mesmerism and imagination, covering the truth with unreal images. Atonement, the correction, is the awareness that the separation never happened.

Teaching the Holy Instant

Teaching the Holy Instant – At the beginning of this talk, David Hoffmeister discusses the concept of choice and the duality of life. We seem to live in a world of duality, where one of the primary goals is to find a life partner. We can see even that is dualistic because even a successful life match involves two, while reality involves only one.