Lesson 52

Lesson 52

Today’s review covers these ideas:

(6) I am upset because I see what is not there.

Reality is never frightening. It is impossible that it could upset me. Reality brings only perfect peace. When I am upset, it is always because I have replaced reality with illusions I made up. The illusions are upsetting because I have given them reality, and thus regard reality as an illusion. Nothing in God’s creation is affected in any way by this confusion of mine. I am always upset by nothing.

(7) I see only the past.

As I look about, I condemn the world I look upon. I call this seeing. I hold the past against everyone and everything, making them my enemies. When I have forgiven myself and remembered Who I am, I will bless everyone and everything I see. There will be no past, and therefore no enemies. And I will look with love on all that I failed to see before.

(8) My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.

I see only my own thoughts, and my mind is preoccupied with the past. What, then, can I see as it is? Let me remember that I look on the past to prevent the present from dawning on my mind. Let me understand that I am trying to use time against God. Let me learn to give the past away, realizing that in so doing I am giving up nothing.

(9) I see nothing as it is now.

If I see nothing as it is now, it can truly be said that I see nothing. I can see only what is now. The choice is not whether to see the past or the present; the choice is merely whether to see or not. What I have chosen to see has cost me vision. Now I would choose again, that I may see.

(10) My thoughts do not mean anything.

I have no private thoughts. Yet it is only private thoughts of which I am aware. What can these thoughts mean? They do not exist, and so they mean nothing. Yet my mind is part of creation and part of its Creator. Would I not rather join the thinking of the universe than to obscure all that is really mine with my pitiful and meaningless “private” thoughts?

 

Journal

¹(6) I am upset because I see what is not there.

I understand this on two levels. On the level I am calling the world, I perceive everything according to the interpretation the ego gives it. For instance, suppose I found out that my friends went to the show together and didn’t invite me. If I used the ego mind to interpret this, I would believe my friends had abandoned me and maybe they didn’t really like me anyway.

If I used my holy mind (the Holy Spirit) to interpret this situation I would be happy that they had a good time and enjoyed each other’s company because that is what Love does. The ego’s interpretation showed me something that was not there. The Holy Spirit’s interpretation showed me Love, which is always there.

On a higher level, I see a world that represents separation. Everything is separate from every other thing and this puts all things in competition with each other. It creates conflict and strife. There is jealousy and rage and guilt. On this level, I acknowledge that nothing I see with my eyes actually exists; I see only the projections of ideas in my mind. If I am upset it can only be that I see what is not there. Reality is not upsetting.

 

²(7) I see only the past.

Again, I am seeing this on two levels. From within the world, I might be upset that I wasn’t invited to be with friends. If so, it is because I have learned from life that friends should not abandon you. Perhaps I learned this from listening to adults with this mindset, or from books I read or TV shows. I think of the mind as this big computer that holds all these learned behaviors and interpretation of behaviors.

When something happens that triggers a search through the ego mind, for instance, my friends didn’t invite me along, I find memories from the past that seem to apply to this situation. I make decisions about the current situation based on this past learning because if I use the ego mind to decide, I don’t have any other information to use.

If I look at this on another level, it is not really about not getting invited to the movies. It is about acknowledging that the ego mind is not useful in making judgments and that those judgments are based on faulty premises and so are not helpful. It is about looking at the root cause of the emotional reaction so that it can be healed. The root cause might be a feeling of unworthiness. If I allow that error to be corrected, I am free to see differently, and am no longer mired in the past.

 

³(8) My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.

All it takes to know this is true is to pay attention to the thoughts that run through the mind. I sat in silence for just a moment and the thoughts that ran through my mind were all thoughts based on the past. Every last one of them. If I have only those thoughts on which to make decisions, nothing is ever going to change. How could it? And that is the ego’s purpose, to use time to maintain the illusion of separation from God.

On another level, as long as I continue to turn to the ego mind for solutions, I am turning to the past and the past does not exist. As Jesus tells us in Chapter 26 of the Text, “You keep an ancient memory before your eyes.” When I am thinking about the past, I am not actually thinking at all; I am reviewing what it is I want to know. Being thus preoccupied with past thoughts, I have defended against the thoughts I think with God and assured that the cycle of birth and death continue and nothing is solved.

 

⁴ (9) I see nothing as it is now.

Everything I see with my eyes or perceive with my mind is a reflection of my thoughts. If my thoughts are mired in the past and therefore do not exist, then what I see with my eyes cannot exist either. If I want to see what is actually there to be seen, I must recognize the problem as it is. I must be willing to acknowledge that my eyes are not for seeing but for image making, and I must acknowledge that there is a way to see and that I want to see.

 

(10) My thoughts do not mean anything.

My thoughts are meaningless because not only are they thoughts of a non-existent past, but because they are “my” thoughts. They seem to be my own private thoughts that belong only to me. This is as impossible because we share the same mind. These thoughts that I think I think are as much of an illusion as is the world they show us, but as long as I accord value to them and treasure the idea of private thoughts, I will be unaware of my real thoughts. I share my real thoughts with all of us, and with our Creator. These are the thoughts I want to uncover.

 

Past Entries

The first thing that caught my attention this morning is that when I am upset it is because I am seeing something that is not there. I am seeing an illusion. This must be true because reality is not upsetting. It is always peaceful. Another thing that I noticed in the lesson is that I am upset because I have given illusions reality, and thus regard reality as an illusion. That means that on some level, I am aware of what I have done. I seemed to have believed in the world I made, believed in it completely, but even then, I knew something was wrong.

I see only my thoughts and my thoughts are preoccupied with the past. Since the past doesn’t exist, I see nothing. That was once such an incredible idea as to be meaningless to me. I just couldn’t take it in. Now I accept that it is true and I have become aware of how I do this, and since I know how I do it, I can choose to do it differently. Here is an example of how this works in my mind.

I was only seeing the past as if it were happening right before my eyes right now.

I noticed my mind mulling over something that happened to my brother. He lost his job due to his inflexible obstinacy and it is not the first time he has hurt himself like this. As I tried and failed to think of some way to show him that he could do this differently, I felt the tension I was experiencing as a sharp pain between my shoulder blades. I put the thoughts away only to pick them back up again because nothing had been solved.

I realized I was obsessing over this, changing nothing, just increasing my stress level. I stopped a moment to rest my mind and ask for clarity. I realized that I was not seeing anything that was happening; I was only seeing the past as if it were happening right before my eyes right now. I realized how true that was as I imagined him getting frustrated with the boss and angry that his boss wouldn’t see reason. I imagined my brother getting more strident as he stubbornly insisted that the boss see his point of view. I could almost feel myself reaching out and stopping him before he exploded and lost his job.

None of that was happening at that moment. It had all happened months ago. I was reliving someone else’s past over and over. I imagined myself talking to him. I imagined the whole conversation in different ways, trying to find the words that would help him to stop doing this to himself. I became upset and realized it was because I was trying to fix the situation and that isn’t my job. I was upset because I was taking on a responsibility that was not mine and that I could not possibly do anything about.

All of this anxiety I put myself through was over something that I was seeing only in my mind. It happened in the past and I was reliving it as if it was happening now and as if I could reach out and change it. The more I thought about it the more ridiculous it became to me. I was seeing the past and so I was seeing nothing and reacting to as if it was something. I may not have been there and it might not be happening now, but the emotional reaction I was having was the same as if I was there watching it unfold right in front of me.

My eyes report to me what I want to see.

This is one level that I become upset because my mind is preoccupied with past thoughts and so I don’t see anything as it is now. In fact, I don’t see at all because I am “looking” at something that is not there. It also happens on another level. Jesus has explained to us that we see only images that we made. We have thoughts and we make images that represent those thoughts, then we project them outward and let what the eyes see convince us of their reality.

Now I already know how good I am at obsessing over the past, so I know my mind is filled with thoughts of the past. These are the thoughts that source the images that make up the world I see. So, even in this moment, as I sit here looking around the room, I see only the past. My eyes report to me what I want to see, and for the most part, it is a reflection of my preoccupation with the past. So I actually see nothing.

There is something and with Vision, I could see it.

But there is something there that I could see. Something beautiful and perfect. Something that is part of creation. I will see it when I release the past and allow my true thoughts to rise up into my awareness. These private, personal thoughts I think of as my own are masking reality. I am part of creation and part of the Creator. I am one with all that is and I share the Mind of God. I have real thoughts. But I can’t know my real thoughts and my private thoughts at the same time. My private thoughts are keeping me in hell as I keep reliving the past over and over for eons of time. They keep me in hell because God is not in the past and I yearn for God.