David's Prayer (17:20-25:44): "So today through our text reading, through our workbook, we open to hear the Holy Spirit - the answer to our prayers - to receive guidance and to receive our function. And we open to the awareness that our happiness and our function are one. Our function of forgiveness is how our happiness is experienced. And that God gave us our happiness in our creation and nothing that the ego has made or said or done has changed our eternal happiness. Today Jesus asks us to think about the many forms of illusion of function that our mind has taken - the many ways in which we tried to find salvation under the ego's guidance. We have looked for happiness in personal gain; we have looked for happiness in personal recognition; we have looked for happiness in interpersonal relationships, with people, dogs and cats and animals and pets, different possessions; we've looked for it in education and intelligence as the world judges it, in status and degrees, cars, jobs, fancy locations, appealing temperatures, appealing weather patterns, climates; we've looked for happiness in safe countries, safe environments. And yet our happiness is our being as God created us; our happiness has never been found in any of these forms, these passing forms that come and go and pass by like the clouds in the sky. We've looked for happiness in skills and abilities and languages; we've looked for happiness in pursuits and hobbies and interests, in accumulating money, in investments of the world, stock markets, bonds, insurance plans. All these things we've mistaken our function of forgiveness for. All these seeming human functions, human pursuits, have led us nowhere. Even when we find relationships that we think we like we can find happiness in, these interpersonal relationships pass away, either through leaving a partner, having a partner leave, a partner getting sick and dying, or ourselves as bodies seeming to die - all of these pursuits of happiness and interpersonal relationships lead us nowhere. We are left with dust, dust in the wind. And so, as an alternative today, we seek for happiness where it CAN be found: in our forgiveness. We have only one purpose today: to realize that our happiness and our function are one. That I am not a man or woman or a child or an adult, I am not a human being, I am not an American or Mexican or Russian or Greek. I am a forgiver, a forgiver of illusions. Today I want to see how happy I can be by letting go of all illusions, letting go of all these insane pursuits that I have believed that I need to make me happy. I am not a being bound in time when I was created as Eternity. Therefore I will not look for happiness in the future. I will not play the ego's game of: 'I will be happen when _____ (the outcome or form is perfect).' All outcomes of form will never be perfect because the ego made them. And the ego is a death wish. But I CAN forgive, I can release all illusions from my mind, all insane pursuits, all ambitions, all goals. Today I realize I have no career goal because happiness - present happiness - is my function. I will not be tempted by the future. Today I realize I have no future relationship goals. I'm not hoping for a family, I'm not hoping for growing old and getting white hair with somebody else, as well as myself. I am letting go of the 'on golden pond' future of growing old together. My happiness is my function. No longer will I desire to be rich or famous or some other illusion of a body. Present happiness is my function. Today I rest in present happiness - peaceful, serene, tranquil and content - as I say, 'My happiness and my function are one.' Amen."