A Course in Miracles Workbook Daily Lesson 338, Year 2022

ACIM Daily Lesson 338.  I am affected only by my thoughts. 1. It needs but this to let salvation come to all the world. ²For in this single thought is everyone released at last from fear.

Lesson 338

I am affected only by my thoughts.

1. It needs but this to let salvation come to all the world. ²For in this single thought is everyone released at last from fear. ³Now has he learned that no one frightens him, and nothing can endanger him. ⁴He has no enemies, and he is safe from all external things. ⁵His thoughts can frighten him, but since these thoughts belong to him alone, he has the power to change them and exchange each fear thought for a happy thought of love. ⁶He crucified himself. ⁷Yet God has planned that His beloved Son will be redeemed.

2. Your plan is sure, my Father,—only Yours. ²All other plans will fail. ³And I will have thoughts that will frighten me, until I learn that You have given me the only Thought that leads me to salvation. ⁴Mine alone will fail, and lead me nowhere. ⁵But the Thought You gave me promises to lead me home, because it holds Your promise to Your Son.

I’ve been talking about beliefs and how we can change our beliefs.

 We can change them from those that take us away from God to those that bring us closer to Him. All beliefs are in our minds, and we simply choose to believe what we want to believe. Therefore, we are always free to choose a different, more preferred belief. We already know how to do this because we do it all the time.

Whatever it is you believe was believed out of choice. To clear the mind of what is not true and to come closer to awakening, it is most helpful to choose more deliberately and with the goal of awakening. Whatever belief doesn’t bring you closer to that goal can be exchanged for one that does. Thoughts come from our beliefs. I’ve noticed that as the beliefs in my mind come more in line with my goals, so do my thoughts.

We have mistakenly come to believe that something outside our mind can affect us. It is the way we set up the world, and it serves a purpose. That is to say, by seeing the problem outside us, we can deny responsibility. Of course, there is an obvious downside to this strategy.  What we deny responsibility for, we also deny the ability to correct. This leaves us with the problem but in a place seemingly outside our control. Thankfully, there is a way to change this.

The way to correct this error is to take complete responsibility for our lives.

When we accept that we are affected only by our thoughts, we have our way out. Certainly, it doesn’t always feel like the problem is only our thoughts, but I have discovered that this is absolutely true. For instance, if one of my children says something harsh to me, I could respond in kind because my feelings are hurt. But what really happened?

My child acted from her/his own present experience, and so what was said reflected that and not anything about me. When I think it is about me, I will react, but I have no control over the problem. And if I feel attacked, I will defend myself, and the problem gets more out of control. But I can see this differently.

What if I realized that their words are just sound until I give that sound meaning? If my feelings are hurt, I must have given that sound the meaning that I am not loved and respected. In this case, I feel attacked. But what if I gave it a different meaning?

What if I decided that their words were just an expression of fear? Maybe they are having a difficult day. Maybe they feel unworthy themselves and are projecting this onto me. I can’t control their words, but I can control how I interpret them. This change of mind on my part will give me another option. I can give the love that is being called for rather than defend myself. I will be in control. The better option is obvious.

This is true in every case.

Am I upset because something didn’t go my way? The ego would like to find something to blame for my upset. But really, it is just my thoughts about the situation that affected me. I can change my thoughts as easily as I am learning to change my beliefs. A case in point is that I sometimes have trouble sleeping. I used to fret over this, and I would try different tricks to get my body to sleep. If nothing worked, I worried about the lack of sleep and made up all sorts of troublesome outcomes.

Certainly, these kinds of thoughts didn’t help me to fall asleep. Eventually, I realized that it was my thoughts that were upsetting me. Now when I can’t sleep, I get up and make good use of my time. The next morning, I let myself experience a lack of sleep however it shows up, and I discovered an interesting thing. What I discovered is that sometimes I would be tired but that I could be happy in my fatigue. Who knew? Another surprise came when I discovered that sometimes I wasn’t even tired, even though that is what used to happen all the time.

All this has helped me to see for myself what Jesus is telling us.

It really is my thoughts that upset me, not the words or behavior or even the situations. Rather, it is always what I think about it all, and I have control over my thoughts. Also, I discovered that control becomes easier and more dependable as I practice it. So, that’s what I do. I practice consistently. I watch my feelings and my thoughts so that I can change my mind if I need to do so in order to remain peaceful.

At first, this felt difficult and sometimes tedious. But now it is just what I do, and because I have proven to myself this is a valuable practice, I do so gladly. To recap, nothing outside my mind is responsible for how I feel, no matter the appearance. My thoughts and beliefs are responsible for how I feel, and I am in charge of them. I choose to believe only those that reflect the truth. My mind can only serve. Thus, it is that in this practice of accepting only true thoughts, I give its service to the Holy Spirit.

That I am affected only by my thoughts is just the absolute truth and is true on all levels.

How I see the world is going to affect me and how I see the world is dependent on my beliefs. What seems wonderful to me may be seen as a disaster to someone else. This is obvious in politics. If you lean far to one side, then what is happening in politics today seems awful. If you lean far to the other side, you think that things are finally getting straightened out. And if you are stuck in your beliefs, then your thoughts about the current political climate are going to determine the level of happiness you are capable of right now.

I talked about how I used to think I needed my kids to respect me and how it affected me when I thought they didn’t. It was all just thought believed that was determining whether or not I could be happy. It didn’t actually have anything to do with how they really felt about me, just what I thought they felt and what I thought that meant. Even being sick is neutral until I decide what it means and how I should feel.

I used to suffer so much from being sick because I thought that’s what being sick was about. Now, I am just sick. My head hurts, and I am congested. That’s all that is happening. I take a Tylenol and a Mucinex, and I go about my business more slowly than usual, but not feeling sorry for myself and not wishing things were different. This is a very different experience from the one I used to have under the same circumstances.

There are some things that are going to happen in my life.

 At first glance, it seems that I am a victim of the circumstances. But it was my thoughts about what should occur for me in this lifetime that decided these situations. I wrote the script, and my thoughts and decisions drive that script. So, what happens to me and how I experience what happens to me are both decided by my thoughts.

As it turns out, I am perfectly safe from any outward experience, no matter how it seems from the perspective of this world. Whatever happens in the world stays in the world. ~smile~ My Self is completely unaffected by the things done here in time. When I leave this dimension and move into another, I leave the scrapes and bumps and wounds behind. So, it may not seem safe here, but ultimately, it is perfectly safe to be here, though depending on my thoughts, it could be painful and frightening while I am here. Luckily, I am learning to think in a way that mitigates a lot of suffering I could be experiencing.

Regina’s Tips

Sometimes, Regina quotes people who are way higher on the awakening ladder than I am. For this lesson, she is sharing about those who are no longer here even though their bodies are still alive in the world. This seems very strange to write, but if we understand that the world is a dream state and only in our own minds, it is easier to understand. Here is something she quoted.

Or, as Nisargadatta said:

“Do not be misled by my eating and smoking, reading and talking. My mind is not here, my life is not here. Your world, of desires and their fulfilments, of fears and their escapes, is definitely not my world. I do not even perceive it except through what you tell me about it. It is your private dream world, and my only reaction to it is to ask you to stop dreaming.”

When I first read this quote, it was so odd to me that it had little meaning. Now I can easily imagine it. It is not my experience and probably won’t be, but I can easily accept it.

Here is something Regina wrote that I love. It feels comforting and encouraging.

Every step of our way home will be laid out for us. We simply need to trust and take the step that we need to take right now!

Please use today to contemplate how perfectly we are led.

Use today as an opportunity to increase trust in guidance that comes from your own spiritual intuition. Realize it will move you to the next step only when you are ready for that next step. In fact, when writing about the stage of learning to detach from the body and abide in ecstasy, Bernadette wrote:

“Until preparation is right, ecstasy keeps returning to the self or consciousness. … The gauge is an increasing ability to ‘bear the vision’ as it were, without the senses going down or without everyday life and its normal behavior coming to a standstill.”

So, God takes its last step to awaken us beyond consciousness when we are ready for that step, after an effective transition period, which the Course calls “the real world.” What a loving process!

Past Entry

This is the belief that took me the longest to completely accept. But now, I am very grateful to know that it is only my own thoughts that affect me. It was a little hard giving up my blame game, but as it turned out, it is better to accept the truth.

When I thought someone else was to blame, I thought I had to change them, and good luck with that! Accepting that I am the only one responsible and so the only one who needs to change at first caused me some confusion and uncertainty. I no longer felt like a victim to the other person or circumstances but now felt like a victim to my own thoughts. This was very disconcerting because I couldn’t figure out what to do with that. I was afraid of myself.

Now I understand that not only am I affected by only my thoughts but that it is a simple process to change those thoughts. It seems to take some consistent effort on my part, but it is easy to do, and I am no longer afraid of myself. I see that I am not a victim of my own thoughts. All I have to do is notice when a thought does not serve my awakening, really look at that thought and its effects (experiencing my emotions and feelings) with the Holy Spirit, and be willing to see it differently. Slowly I have changed much of what I used to believe, and so have changed the way I experience my life.

The thing that was hardest for me to accept is that there are no exceptions to this idea.

There cannot be any one thing that belongs to someone else or that is caused by some outside circumstance. The ego really wants to hold onto some of those blame thoughts and argues for the impossibility of certain things being under my control. The only reason it seems hard to allow my mind to be changed is that sometimes, I don’t want it changed. I hide that truth by believing that I am a victim when actually I am always getting exactly what I want.

I was thinking about examples in which it would be hard to apply this lesson. What if someone were trying to kill my body? Would I only be able to stand in terror, or would I recognize that I am free to accept death with perfect equanimity? If I could prevent it, I would, but if I couldn’t prevent the death, could I be at peace with it? After all, what can they kill but the illusion of a self, a body that does not exist in any real way? I am an eternal being that cannot die.

Everything that is happening in the illusion is ultimately unimportant because it is an illusion. I become upset because I have given it value it does not have. This is just a thought, and it is my thought, and I can change my mind and have another thought. I created the fearsome circumstance, and with the Holy Spirit’s help, I can step out of the fear, if not out of the circumstance.

Why would I think of this as extreme?

I would not look at losing the body as a sacrifice of some sort unless I were identified with the body and I thought it was me. In that case, losing the body would feel like losing me. That, too, is just a thought and an erroneous thought. I am as free to think differently about this as I am about all other things that are not true. Asking the Holy Spirit to show me how to see this correctly is the answer. I will no longer be affected by ego thoughts if I am willing to give them up.

Now I try to imagine what it would be like to lose the body if I allow my thoughts to be corrected. I see that death of the body is just an experience, completely neutral, that is, without any meaning. I have given it the meaning of losing self, it will be fearful. As I withdraw that meaning and allow it to return to neutrality, fear dissolves, and this event returns to the empty slate it is. Instead of allowing the ego to write its meaning on it, I wait for knowledge to be given to me. What a different experience this would be.

And if I want to end this confusion once and for all, instead of working with each thought, let me change my mind about the thought system I am interested in. I want to always use my holy mind where the Holy Spirit abides and never call on the ego for guidance. That complete change of mind is my goal, anyway. But if I need more time, I will use that time wisely.

Contemplation 2025

To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 338 click here.

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