Lessons 1-15
With key points from lessons 51-53 and David
Posted by aplecompte on July 10th, 2010
I need to know the first lessons like the back of my hand. I want my mind as clear as a chalkboard that has been wiped with a wet rag. I need to remember how the world arose. It is a projection; there is no world outside my mind. I order my own thoughts. Thoughts that do not come from God are automatically projected. I have a perception problem. I am the dreamer of the dream. I dream a cosmos of time, which means I believe that time is not over and that the separation is current and valuable. It will only go away when I give it a new purpose, when I release the ego’s linear perspective of time and the things of time.
The world is an out-picturing of judging and preferring. It is an attempt to make a world, to justify my ego. I can stop playing the game of the world, let go of the cost of playing it, be a teacher of God, embrace non-compromise and move into mysticism. I follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance, which is judgmental in the deceived mind (as if it were a process). He leads me back. I awaken in an instant.
1. Nothing I see means anything. It is not real, does not exist, is all nothing. Everything I perceive is separated from the whole, is illusion. “I see nothing.” I am hallucinating. What I think I see has no meaning. I must let it go by realizing it has no meaning.
2. I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me. My perception is subjective, cannot be the truth, consists of parts cut out and labeled. I have judged everything I see. My judgments have hurt me, and I do not want to see according to them. I am building my own illusory universe. I assign the meaning. To perceive a cool day is mass hypnosis. There is no objective “cool day.” A yogi has been filmed perfectly comfortable at freezing temperatures.
3. I do not understand anything I see. What I see is the projection of my own errors of thought. There is no sense in trying to understand it. But there is every reason to let it go. First I have the thought; then I project it. They are all symbols, specific images, illusions that keep my mind busy with nothing. I can perceive the world differently.
4. These thoughts do not mean anything because I am trying to think without God. The mind that thinks these thoughts is separate from God. W-99 They are debris. None of them can be called good or bad. I do not know anything. My real thoughts are the thoughts I think with God. The Course is full of examples. God’s thoughts are abstract, not unlike feeling experiences.
5. I am never upset for the reason I think. I think that the cause of my upset is in the world. I am constantly trying to justify my thoughts. I am constantly trying to make them true. I make all things my enemies, so that my anger is justified and my attacks are warranted. I have done this to defend a thought system that has hurt me, and that I no longer want. I am willing to let it go. I believe I’m guilty, so my mind draws forth victimizer witnesses to prove it, making me appear to be a victim. I am upset because I think I separated from God and I feel very guilt about that, so guilty I have repressed the memory.
6. I am upset because I see what is not there. I see my projection, my dream. When I am upset it is always because I have replaced reality with illusions I made up. I am always upset by nothing.
7. I see only the past. As I look about, I condemn the world I look upon. I have been taught to give meaning to specifics: “What is it mommy?” "A cup." I call this seeing. I hold the past against everyone and everything, making them my enemies. My mind is preoccupied with the past thoughts of the ego belief system. When I have forgiven myself and remember who I am, I will bless everyone and everything I see.
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. No one really sees anything. I see only my own thoughts projected outward. My mind is actually blank. This seems like "now," but the ego uses time so that my mind believes the past is true and is still present, like a movie that seems to be happening now. It is my lesson to learn (leave others out.) The first “law” of chaos is: the truth is different for everyone.
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. To really see is to see 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 real seeing, or 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. They are specific, private, past judgments. They are meaningless, outside, past. What can these thoughts mean? They do not exist, and so they mean nothing. I can recognize nothingness; it is the world I see.
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?
Private thoughts do not exist. There is no individual. I perceive the false effects of a false cause (the ego) to prove a false conclusion: that I control my life despite others who attack me. The ego content is illusion, the out-picturing of the belief in the separation
The one problem is separation, which translates into my perceptual problem.
The one solution is the Holy Spirit, Who uses symbols I understand to help me reverse my mistaken understanding of cause and effect. Cause is only in the mind.
11. My meaningless thoughts (film) are showing me a meaningless world (screen). It seems as if the world determines what I perceive. This is backwards. My thoughts (cause) determine the world I see (effect). Since the thoughts of which I am aware do not mean anything, the world that pictures them can have no meaning. What is producing this world is insane, and so is what it produces. The world I see is the unreal effects of an unreal cause (ego). Reality is not insane, and I have real thoughts as well as insane ones. I can therefore see a real world, if I look to my real thoughts as my guide for seeing.
12. I am upset because I see a meaningless world, not good or bad. Insane thoughts are upsetting. They produce a world in which there is no order anywhere. Only chaos rules a world that represents chaotic thinking. I cannot live in peace in such a world. I am grateful that this world is not real, and that I need not see it at all unless I choose to value it. And I do not choose to value what is totally insane and has no meaning. There is a desire to hold onto a private self, to be separate; this is temptation. I don’t have to try to be in the world.
13. A meaningless world engenders fear. What is totally insane engenders fear because it is completely undependable, and offers no grounds for trust. Nothing in madness is dependable. It holds out no safety and no hope. But such a world is not real. I have given it the illusion of reality, and have suffered from my belief in it. Now I choose to withdraw this belief, and place my trust in reality. In choosing this, I will escape all the effects of the world of fear, because I am acknowledging that it does not exist. I let go of the game of the world. There is nothing real about history. There is no world. Instead, I live the devotional life; I focus within, on truth, on reality. We are mighty companions for each other; witnesses for the truth.
14. God did not create a meaningless world. God is the Source of all meaning, and everything that is real is in His Mind. It is in my mind too, because He created it with me. Why should I continue to suffer from the effects of my own insane thoughts, when the perfection of creation is my home? Let me remember the power of my decision, and recognize where I really abide. God created me!
15. My thoughts are images that I have made. Whatever I see reflects my thoughts. It is my thoughts that tell me where I am and what I am. The fact that I see a world in which there is suffering, loss and death shows me that I am seeing only the representation of my insane thoughts, and am not allowing my real thoughts to cast their beneficent light on what I see. Yet God's way is sure. The images I have made cannot prevail against Him because it is not my will that they do so. My will is His, and I will place no other gods before Him.
Tags: Ego
