Lesson 25
I do not know what anything is for.
W-pI.25.1. Purpose is meaning. 2 Today’s idea explains why nothing you see means anything. 3 You do not know what it is for. 4 Therefore, it is meaningless to you. 5 Everything is for your own best interests. 6 That is what it is for; that is its purpose; that is what it means. 7 It is in recognizing this that your goals become unified. 8 It is in recognizing this that what you see is given meaning.
W-pI.25.2. You perceive the world and everything in it as meaningful in terms of ego goals. 2 These goals have nothing to do with your own best interests, because the ego is not you. 3 This false identification makes you incapable of understanding what anything is for. 4 As a result, you are bound to misuse it. 5 When you believe this, you will try to withdraw the goals you have assigned to the world, instead of attempting to reinforce them.
W-pI.25.3. Another way of describing the goals you now perceive is to say that they are all concerned with “personal” interests. 2 Since you have no personal interests, your goals are really concerned with nothing. 3 In cherishing them, therefore, you have no goals at all. 4 And thus you do not know what anything is for.
W-pI.25.4. Before you can make any sense out of the exercises for today, one more thought is necessary. 2 At the most superficial levels, you do recognize purpose. 3 Yet purpose cannot be understood at these levels. 4 For example, you do understand that a telephone is for the purpose of talking to someone who is not physically in your immediate vicinity. 5 What you do not understand is what you want to reach him for. 6 And it is this that makes your contact with him meaningful or not.
W-pI.25.5. It is crucial to your learning to be willing to give up the goals you have established for everything. 2 The recognition that they are meaningless, rather than “good” or “bad,” is the only way to accomplish this. 3 The idea for today is a step in this direction.
W-pI.25.6. Six practice periods, each of two-minutes duration, are required. 2 Each practice period should begin with a slow repetition of the idea for today, followed by looking about you and letting your glance rest on whatever happens to catch your eye, near or far, “important” or “unimportant,” “human” or “nonhuman.” 3 With your eyes resting on each subject you so select, say, for example:
4 I do not know what this chair is for.
5 I do not know what this pencil is for.
6 I do not know what this hand is for.
7 Say this quite slowly, without shifting your eyes from the subject until you have completed the statement about it. 8 Then move on to the next subject, and apply today’s idea as before.
Journal
Purpose is meaning and since we don’t know what anything is for, we don’t know the purpose. What purpose we are aware of is on a superficial level. As Jesus described, we know that the purpose of the phone is to talk to someone, but we don’t know what the conversation is for. Jesus says that it is crucial to our learning to give up our ego-driven goals by realizing they are meaningless.
Using the phone call as an example, my desire to call a friend might have many ego goals. Maybe I’m bored and I want my friend to entertain me. Maybe I am disturbed about something and that phone call will hopefully distract me from my feelings. Maybe, as my friend, Nancy, described it, that phone call is for the purpose of upholding the story of me. Those goals are meaningless because they are not shared. If I call because I love that friend, maybe because we plan to use the time to encourage and support our mutual spiritual aspirations or understanding, then the call has meaning because it is shared.
Yesterday, I looked at the ego purposes for losing weight. These were my personal goals but how could I have personal goals when I am not separate. Anything that is personal is meaningless because there is no personal. That is an illusion. The goal to heal my mind of self-destructive thoughts is not meaningless. That is in my own best interests because this is a shared interest. Healing of ‘my’ mind is the healing of the mind as a whole.
If I look at everything as being in my best interests, then I have a single achievable goal. This is far simpler and understandable than thinking I have to work out the meaning and purpose of an untold number of things, all of which I would be wrong. This makes the Loving All Method even more understandable and more useful to us. Just love everything that happens because it is in your best interest even if you may not understand how that is so, probably don’t understand. To simply rest in God knowing all is in Divine order and you are being guided Home as you relax and accept with this as your only goal.