Lesson 15

Lesson 15

My thoughts are images that I have made.

It is because the thoughts you think you think appear as images that you do not recognize them as nothing. You think you think them, and so you think you see them. This is how your “seeing” was made. This is the function you have given your body’s eyes. It is not seeing. It is image making. It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions.

This introductory idea to the process of image making that you call seeing will not have much meaning for you. You will begin to understand it when you have seen little edges of light around the same familiar objects which you see now. That is the beginning of real vision. You can be certain that real vision will come quickly when this has occurred.

As we go along, you may have many “light episodes.” They may take many different forms, some of them quite unexpected. Do not be afraid of them. They are signs that you are opening your eyes at last. They will not persist, because they merely symbolize true perception, and they are not related to knowledge. These exercises will not reveal knowledge to you. But they will prepare the way to it.

In practicing the idea for today, repeat it first to yourself, and then apply it to whatever you see around you, using its name and letting your eyes rest on it as you say:

This ___ is an image that I have made.
That ___ is an image that I have made.

It is not necessary to include a large number of specific subjects for the application of today’s idea. It is necessary, however, to continue to look at each subject while you repeat the idea to yourself. The idea should be repeated quite slowly each time.

Although you will obviously not be able to apply the idea to very many things during the minute or so of practice that is recommended, try to make the selection as random as possible. Less than a minute will do for the practice periods, if you begin to feel uneasy. Do not have more than three application periods for today’s idea unless you feel completely comfortable with it, and do not exceed four. However, the idea can be applied as needed throughout the day.

 

Journal

What an extraordinary lesson this is! First, it tells us that we don’t really think, we just think we think. Then it tells us that the reason we believe our thoughts is because we make images of them that convince us the thoughts are real and meaningful. What are those images? They are the world we see with our eyes.

We call it seeing, but really, the eyes are just image makers. We tell our eyes what it is we want to see and our eyes report that image back to us and we say to ourselves, “It must be true because I see it with my eyes.” Nifty trick, I guess. Lesson 325 is the sister lesson to this one and explains the mechanics of this process step by step.

There is real vision, a way that we can “see” without the eyes and that vision will show us what our holy mind wants to see. When this starts to occur we may have light episodes in which we see haloes of light around objects. I never have, myself, but I have spoken to people who have had that experience.

When I did this exercise, I realized that I could do it all day. I have no discomfort with recognizing that each thing I look on is an image I have made. I thoroughly believe this. On the other hand, when something seems to be affecting me, a sickness in my body or hearing that my child is hurt, that kind of thing, I slip back into the illusion and for a while, it may feel very real to me. This is the reason I practice this lesson so that when the world starts to feel real, I will remember the truth.

 

Past Entries

This lesson used to just blow me away, which of course meant that I never really accepted it, so it was brand new for me each time I looked at it. Now it feels perfectly normal to me. (“Prepare to say bye bye, ego.”) It is telling me that I was so wrong about the world I thought I saw that it was hard to even grasp an error of that magnitude.

We have learned that everything we see is a product of our thoughts which are rooted in the past, so we are not really looking at anything as it is now. Yesterday we found out just what it really means that God did not create a meaningless world and since the world we have been looking at is clearly meaningless, it doesn’t exist. Nothing in form exists and never has. Do you feel the floor under you starting to dissolve? I feel like holding onto to something so I don’t tumble down the rabbit hole. But wait, there is nothing to hold onto!

Today’s lesson helps me understand how all of this happened. First I have to understand that I think I am thinking, but I am not. These thoughts I am so familiar with are not really my thoughts, but I do have real thoughts that I will become aware of when I release my belief in the unreal thoughts.

Ok, so I have an unreal thought about a bottle of water. In the past, I have learned things about water. So I think about a bottle of water that reflects all of this past learning, and voila, Dasani water appears in the illusion. I think I think bottled water, and so bottled water appears. Now I “look” at the bottled water on the table in front of me and that it is seen with the body’s eyes seems to prove that there really is such a thing as bottled water. This is the function I have given my eyes, to convince me that there is a world outside of my mind.

Kenneth Wapnick used a simple demonstration once that stuck with me. He takes a piece of paper, crumples it up, and throws it to the floor. Then he turns his back on it and turning around to face it again he appears surprised to see it. He says, “Who put that paper there?” This is what I think of when I read this lesson. I have a thought, I project the thought into the world, it appears as an object, I turn away just long enough to forget that I put it there with my thought, and then I point to the object and say, “See. It exists.”

I think I think some nonsense and then project it onto the screen of my imagination, and my equally false thought about eyes and their purpose make it possible for me to “see” what is not there and so convince me further that the illusion is real. Do you have any idea how hard it is was to convince myself that all I see is really only images of my thoughts and none of it exists, not even the eyes that purportedly see them? Of course, you do, and so does Jesus. That is why he gave us such simple easy steps to get us there.

This concept is so familiar to me now that I don’t even question it, and yet, if I really knew it everything would change. If there was no doubt in my mind at all, I suppose I would be able to walk through walls since they don’t exist unless I think them and then project them outward into images of walls. At the least, I would walk the world in fearlessness, but that is not consistently true for me now. Easy little steps are preparing my mind for knowledge that doesn’t waver with situations.

How do I apply this to my life? Well, very gently, as Jesus suggests. In my new, deeper understanding of these lessons, I feel like I have something very slippery in my hands, and if I am not careful, I will lose my grip on it. I don’t want to lose this, so I am asking the Holy Spirit to be with me while I do these lessons. I am opening up to Him and allowing Him to deepen my understanding.

Here are some examples of what even my limited acceptance has shown me. I was suddenly sick one day with fever and vomiting and then realized that I had done this to myself, and the sickness vanished in the blink of an eye. I was shaking with terror and crying uncontrollably over some scary story I had told myself when I suddenly remembered that this need not be. Peace descended instantly and I could hardly remember why I had been so upset.

A little more dramatic now; twice I have turned into an oncoming car and not been hit. Both times it happened so fast and was such a non-event that the ego mind could not grasp what had just happened. I tried to tell someone about it once, but how do you share something like that? Unless they are ready to know that the world we believe in doesn’t exist, they cannot comprehend it, and if pressed, the mind will make up stories to explain it.

 My message from Holy Spirit

Holy Spirit: Yes, Myron, you are gaining a new understanding. Do not be afraid of this. You would not have this awareness unless you were ready to look at it. Don’t be afraid of losing it because it is part of your holy mind and has always been there and always will. Your awareness will slip in and out as you become more willing to see it, and then retreat back into fear, but it will never go away.

Relax about that. Everything really is in perfect order and you are moving at exactly the right speed. I am with you, holding you up, gently encouraging and helping. I am not concerned that you are going to fail. I am not judging your retreats. I understand, and I know of your ultimate success, so I know there is nothing to fear. Your success is not far into the future, for there is no future. It is right there.

Me: I feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. I do want gentle easy little steps, Holy Spirit, but I also want to be there! I give this all to You because the one thing I know for sure is that I want to make no decisions without you. Thank you. I love you.

2018

The Holy Spirit was right that my understanding has grown exactly as it should. I don’t have any resistance to this idea at all. I often forget that others don’t get this and don’t want to. It is so firmly in my mind that I simply expect everyone to know it. But of course, they don’t, and so I have learned to be careful how I talk about it. I have to remember how it felt the first time I read it. I do absolutely understand it and accept that it is true, and yet, when the story of Myron takes a scary turn, I sometimes get sucked right into it and believe all that my senses tell me, at least until I get my metaphysical legs under me again. In that sense, it is still a slippery slope for me.