Lesson 45

Lesson 45

God is the Mind with which I think.

Today’s idea holds the key to what your real thoughts are. They are nothing that you think you think, just as nothing that you think you see is related to vision in any way. There is no relationship between what is real and what you think is real. Nothing that you think are your real thoughts resemble your real thoughts in any respect. Nothing that you think you see bears any resemblance to what vision will show you.

You think with the Mind of God. Therefore you share your thoughts with Him, as He shares His with you. They are the same thoughts, because they are thought by the same Mind. To share is to make alike, or to make one. Nor do the thoughts you think with the Mind of God leave your mind, because thoughts do not leave their source. Therefore, your thoughts are in the Mind of God, as you are. They are in your mind as well, where He is. As you are part of His Mind, so are your thoughts part of His Mind.

Where, then, are your real thoughts? Today we will attempt to reach them. We will have to look for them in your mind, because that is where they are. They must still be there, because they cannot have left their source. What is thought by the Mind of God is eternal, being part of creation.

Have at least three practice periods today, each lasting three to five minutes. A longer time is highly recommended, but only if you find the time slipping by with little or no sense of strain. The form of practice we will use today is the most natural and easy one in the world for the trained mind, just as it seems to be the most unnatural and difficult for the untrained mind.

Our three five-minute practice periods for today will take the same general form that we used in applying yesterday’s idea. We will attempt to leave the unreal and seek for the real. We will deny the world in favor of truth. We will not let the thoughts of the world hold us back. We will not let the beliefs of the world tell us that what God would have us do is impossible. Instead, we will try to recognize that only what God would have us do is possible.

We will also try to understand that only what God would have us do is what we want to do. And we will also try to remember that we cannot fail in doing what He would have us do. There is every reason to feel confident that we will succeed today. It is the Will of God.

Begin the exercises for today by repeating the idea to yourself, closing your eyes as you do so. Then spend a fairly short period in thinking a few relevant thoughts of your own, keeping the idea in mind. After you have added some four or five thoughts of your own to the idea, repeat it again and tell yourself gently:

My real thoughts are in my mind. I would like to find them.

Then try to go past all the unreal thoughts that cover the truth in your mind, and reach to the eternal.

Under all the senseless thoughts and mad ideas with which you have cluttered up your mind are the thoughts that you thought with God in the beginning. They are there in your mind now, completely unchanged. They will always be in your mind, exactly as they always were. Everything you have thought since then will change, but the Foundation on which it rests is wholly changeless.

It is this Foundation toward which the exercises for today are directed. Here is your mind joined with the Mind of God. Here are your thoughts one with His. For this kind of practice only one thing is necessary; approach it as you would an altar dedicated in Heaven to God the Father and to God the Son. For such is the place you are trying to reach. You will probably be unable as yet to realize how high you are trying to go. Yet even with the little understanding you have already gained, you should be able to remind yourself that this is no idle game, but an exercise in holiness and an attempt to reach the Kingdom of Heaven .

In the shorter exercise periods for today, try to remember how important it is to you to understand the holiness of the mind that thinks with God. Take a minute or two, as you repeat the idea throughout the day, to appreciate your mind’s holiness. Stand aside, however briefly, from all thoughts that are unworthy of Him Whose host you are. And thank Him for the Thoughts He is thinking with you.

 

Journal

First, As Regina suggested, I re-read Lesson 44, God is the Light in which I see. I was reminded, “While you practice in this way, you leave behind everything that you now believe, and all the thoughts that you have made up. Properly speaking, this is the release from hell. Yet perceived through the ego’s eyes, it is loss of identity and a descent into hell.” This fear of losing my identity is the reason the ego fights so hard to keep my attention on its thoughts.

Here is what stood out to me this morning in Lesson 45.

“You think with the Mind of God. Therefore you share your thoughts with Him, as He shares His with you. They are the same thoughts, because they are thought by the same Mind.” 

Yesterday, I learned that God is the light in which I see, and I was attempting to reach Him. What an astounding idea! I was attempting to reach God! Today, I am told that I share the Mind of God. We think the same thoughts. I think with the Mind of God. God’s Mind is my mind. I keep writing this in different ways because I want never again to lose sight of this fact. I am not this body with its brain. I am not this ego mind with its thoughts.

What I am is beyond comprehension to the ego mind. I approached this meditation with awe. I did not feel like I reached my real thoughts, the thoughts I think with God, but my desire to do so has taken on a sacredness of purpose that was not there before. I can do this because of what I am.

My failure to achieve my goal this morning was the result of the belief I am something else, something less. But this false identity is falling away because I am losing my interest in it. What did happen, is that my mind became very calm and peaceful with few thoughts. When the meditation was over, immediately thoughts began to enter my mind and the contrast was stark.

Regina’s Tips

… when Lesson 45 says, “You thinkwith the Mind of God. Therefore you share your thoughts with Him, … They are the same thoughts, because they are thought by the same Mind,” it is not referring to the words of your native language in your mind and it is not referring to picture thoughts. This is important to know, because if you are looking for the right words in your mind or the right pictures, you will remain focused on form and not go beyond form, which is where your “real thoughts” are realized.

 

My thoughts

Since I first wrote in my journal about this lesson, some things have changed. For one thing, I have little fear of losing my identity. Whatever is left is so very subtle that I have to tease it out in the open where I can see it. Another thing that has changed in these last 6 months is that I fully understand what Regina is saying about the thoughts I think with God.

These are not thoughts with words. What I am able to receive at this point is a feeling of being loved and treasured, it is sometimes received by me as ideas that I translate into words. Even so, I doubt seriously it is anywhere near the real thoughts I think with God. For that, there are no words. That is why it is true communication, because it is unencumbered by symbols.

Past Entries

I don’t really think and I don’t really see. I just think I think and I pretend to see something that is not there. But Vision is mine and my real thoughts are available to me. In fact, God’s Thoughts are available to me because I share His Mind. He knows my thoughts and I know His. This is what Oneness means. This is what sharing means. If we share our thoughts, we are united, we are One.”They are the same thoughts, because they are thought by the same Mind.”

The significance of that statement is so incredible that my mind wants to just skip right over it. I am in God and He is in me. My mind is very holy. All of the holiness lessons are coming alive for me as I realize the significance of this lesson. Of course my mind is holy, it is in the Mind of God. Jesus wants us to know that we are holy and, as we accept this truth, our holiness is made manifest even in the illusion of the world we are making.

He wants us to know that we are not seeing right now because we cannot see in the darkness we made. But we can see because we have access to light, the light that is in the Mind of God, and so is in my mind as well. We are not thinking right now, but we can think because we have access to the thoughts we think with God. Of course we do. We are in the Mind of God and all thought is shared in that Mind.

Everything in the Course is trying to help us understand that our goal is to join. We are to join with our brother, to join with Jesus, to join with God, to know we are one with every living thing. Union is our natural state, our reality and to bring our mind back to this reality we must be aware of what we have chosen instead and choose again. It all starts to fall into place for me. I only thought I understood until this morning, and now I see that I had a bare glimmering of the truth until this moment.

Of course, I have seen that understanding is the very first, tentative step into reality. It is the cracking open of a door that I had once held firmly closed, but that crack lets in the light and I see so much more clearly now. I see the reason I am to join in every case and at every opportunity. It is in thinking that separation is even possible that caused the entire illusion to unfold.

Now that I understand reality is union, I am stepping backwards, working my way out of the illusion. I do this as I see the ways in which I pretend that I am separate, and choose union instead. I am not doing this alone, and even saying that makes me laugh because what is “alone” except an attempt to keep the illusion in place. There is no alone. Alone is a dream of something that is not possible. I let go of separation as I join with the Holy Spirit and allow the false beliefs to be undone.

I want to stop thinking that I am separate. I want to embrace union in every way I can. I want to use time for that one purpose, to recognize that I am joined and in that joining, to know myself as part of God, with Whom I am joined forever. This morning and at least two more times today, I will allow my mind and heart to open to union with God.

I will open to the thoughts I think with God, the thoughts that have never left the mind, because thoughts leave not their source. These meaningless thoughts I think I think change, and are one moment there and the next gone. But what God has thought is eternal and so are my real thoughts. This is why I can reach them. They are in the Mind and so am I. They are available to me because, as I am beginning to understand, I think them with the Mind of God and so they, too, are eternal.