Workbook Lesson 13, A meaningless world engenders fear

Today’s lesson shares an idea that is really important for anyone who wants to awaken beyond the ego point-of-view.

“The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own ideas … fearful that the void may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own impotence and unreality. And on this alone it is correct. It is essential, therefore, that you learn to recognize the meaningless, and accept it without fear.”

This also tells us how we “unweave” our way out of fantasy. (Reference NTI Romans, Chapter 3.)

Politics, relationships, spiritual discussions and more present us with wonderful opportunities to see the opinions and beliefs we want to cling to and defend. If we pay close attention we can feel the energy arise within that “I must make this point,” “prove that I am right” or get the other one to “see it my way.” This energy is the ego rushing in frantically to establish its own ideas so that it remains potent, seeming real and ‘me.’

If we want to unweave our way out of fantasy, it is “essential, therefore, that you learn to recognize the meaningless, and accept it without fear.” In other words, feel that energy rushing forth inside of us and do nothing to satisfy it. Hold back on our opinion. Do not try to prove we are right. Let the other have their point of view. Etc.

Feel the ego squirm. Rest, accept and trust. Let it squirm. Do nothing. The threads are pulled out of the ego tapestry as we become comfortable with not placing meaning on everything we perceive.

Note: One fun exercise today might be to write down the things that seem important to you, the things you’ve noticed yourself feeling fired up about recently, and then look at the list you have written and say to yourself, “I am looking at a meaningless world. A meaningless world engenders fear because I think I am in competition with God.” This may help you to rest, accept and trust instead of rushing forth with opinions and defense in those same or similar circumstances in the future.

Lesson 12, I am upset because I see a meaningless world

We think that what upsets us are the “horrible” things that we know about the world, but Jesus says right in this lesson, “What you see does not matter.” He  says, “You teach yourself this as you give whatever your glance rests on equal attention and equal time. This is a beginning step in learning to give them all equal value.” Giving them all equal value means giving them all no value at all. This is what this lesson is reinforcing for us.

NTI Luke told us that everything is given meaning by the thinker.  We make an unevaluated judgment about something and then that is the meaning it has for us.  We then experience the effects of the unevaluated judgment we have made.  This is a very simple summary of how we go about creating our experience, through one unevaluated judgment after another. We then take an unevaluated judgment and reapply it when a similar set of circumstances arise. Thus, our experience comes from our own decisions based on the meaning we have given to the meaningless.

We make decisions by casting attention. Thoughts come into the mind. We do not actually “think” them.  They appear.  Some of them seem to capture our interest, and we cast attention on them.  Typically, casting attention is followed by a value judgment or decision.  The first value judgment or decision is simply, “This idea is meaningful.”  From there attention goes more deeply into ideas and makes additional judgments.  Thus, NTI Romans says “Judgment is a web of meaningless thoughts.”

Be aware that healing occurs through recognition (seeing) and resting. That is your job in healing. Clear awareness does the rest. (Clear awareness can be equated to the Holy Spirit.)

Rest, Accept and Trust (RAT) is a simple reminder of your job in the healing process.

1. 1. Rest the mind by withdrawing your attention/belief from obsessive thinking. If that is challenging, try positive healing-focused self-talk such as, “Ok, just breathe now. Take a deep breath. Now another. This is okay. This is coming up now because I have decided to heal. I want to heal. And in order to heal, things must come up. I am happy this is here, but I do not want to give it my attention. I want to rest attention away from this so it can be healed. I will focus attention on my breath. I trust healing is happening. I am happy for this opportunity.” Etcetera, or something similar.
   2. Accept the feeling. Allow it to be. Realize that as this feeling comes into awareness and is seen, it is healing. Stay out of the way. Do not try to change anything. It is just a feeling, an emotional energy and nothing more. Let it be as it is. Be grateful that healing is mysteriously occurring.
   3. Trust that healing is occurring. You have done your part by resting and accepting. Clear awareness (God, Holy Spirit) is taking care of everything else. You have gotten out of the way so healing can happen. That is all you were asked to do.

In summary, I’m upset because I have made judgments. These judgments have arisen because I have allowed my attention to become focused on thoughts that seem to pop into the mind and that I give credence to.  Jesus says that they are meaningless and I wouldn’t be upset if I let the truth be written upon the world for me—if I quit deciding what things, situations and people mean and casting my attention upon those decisions. So, all the meaningless thoughts being equally of no value means they aren’t horrible; they just are not true.  Therefore, the horror (or sorrow, or hatred, etc.) is removed because I know my thoughts aren’t real and I don’t have to play the game by casting my attention on thoughts that participate in the fantasy. Instead, I can rest, accept/allow and trust. Jesus promises learning to do so, will make me indescribably happy.

LESSON 11. My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.

This lesson begins with these weighty words: “This is the first idea we have had that is related to a major phase of the correction process; the reversal of the thinking of the world.”  The decision to believe without basis was the first error and remains the fundamental error. Judgment is defined as the evaluation of evidence to make a decision. (Wikipedia). NTI Romans explains that we had the wish to experience the answer to the question “What if nothing was as it is?” Though we had the option to laugh at this absurd thought, we looked upon experience and decided to see it as evidence that we had actually changed something.

Deciding to believe the false “evidence” presented to us by what we created made and maintains the world we now seem to see. To continue to look there for evidence as to what we are and how we are to be is to continue to build on the layers of fantasy created by our first decision to see something that was not. As NTI Romans, Chapter 3 explains,

Within your mind reason is confused, because you believe all that isn’t true. You cannot truly judge at all, because you know nothing on which to decide. Your world is a fantasy of beliefs based on experience created through judgment without basis.

NTI Romans Chapter 4 tells us that existence is Love. What we see does not seem to support that immutable fact. But, we must remember that we look upon that which was created to show us something different than the truth; that which was made to seem real, but has no truth in it.

The lesson continues, “It seems as if the world determines what you perceive. Today’s idea introduces the concept that your thoughts determine the world you see.” It is important to understand that this truth is not limited in its application. This is why the sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the atonement (or correction) for himself. The one mind awakens to its truth as we each awaken to the meaninglessness of our thoughts about the world.

NTI Romans 7 states:

With Jesus, you have been released, because with Jesus, a belief has been loosened in the mind. With Jesus, the thought that you are forever separate from God, forever within a spatial compartment of time, forever a slave to your own invention…with Jesus, this was all undone. In Jesus you see the limitlessness that is your truth. In Jesus you see your innocence and love. In Jesus, your perfection remains unmarred. My dear child, through the symbol of Jesus, you glimpse your own truth!

Jesus was able to see past the appearances of the world to the truth. This is why he was said to be “in the world but not of it.” Jesus did not rely upon the “evidence” he saw in the world that would tell him what we all assume is true without question: that we are beings separate from each other, that we must give credence to the ideas of fear, competition, struggle, etc. Jesus’ life was a perfect reflection of what he came to see was the truth of his being – changeless, invulnerable, eternal.

This is what we are asked to do. Rather than digging deeper into the fantasy we created, we are to look squarely upon what appears to be evidence that the world is a place of lack, limitation, hate, and sorrow, and make another decision; to see fantasy for what it is and give up the game of giving it our believing attention. In this way, we undo the layered judgment we have laid upon ourselves and the world and allow it to unwind.

We do this by practicing forgiveness—by allowing the world to be — by not making judgments based on what appears – but by understanding our thoughts are judgments without basis and the world we see is based upon this meaningless web of judgments and nothing more. As NTI Romans Chapter 2 says,

Judgment is a web of meaningless thoughts given only the power of fantasy and absolutely nothing more. The game you have made to test your curiosity is a game with rules and options. This gives you the ability to continue to make judgments and to continue to play the game.

We also have the ability to quit making baseless judgments. We must each unwind our own belief in the world. We do this by building on a solid foundation of truth. We do this by trusting the words and the example of the masters, whose truth resonates in our own hearts, where our own remembrance of the truth resides. We begin this process by applying it to each of the thoughts we think carry so much importance; to each thought that seems so “true”, so justified. This reversal of our own judgments about the world begins with this tiny step toward Truth.

Lesson 10 “My thoughts do not mean anything”

NTI Romans, Chapter 4 says, “Existence is Love, and Love is existence.” I don’t feel this is something to think about. Thinking can argue against this fact and keep us blind to its truth. I think this is something that is discovered through practices like awareness-watching-awareness and the loving consciousness methods of meditation. However, I see this as a fact. Existence (or being) and love are absolutely synonymous.

According to the online Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, existence is “reality opposed to appearance.”

The thinking mind may argue that existence is not love. It may argue that existence is hell. That is certainly the experience for some individuals, but that is because they are focused on appearance, not reality, especially the appearance of thought.

The energy of thought is not existence. It is appearance. The online Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines appearance as an “external show.”

The early workbook lessons are helping us discover that our thoughts are an external show. For example, today’s workbook lesson (10) says, “you might imagine that you are watching an oddly assorted procession going by, which has little if any personal meaning for you.”

The problem is that attention has become so engrossed in the external show that it does not know the difference between what it is and the show it watches. But there is a difference between the essence of attention and the show it watches. Being unaware of this difference is delusion. Discovering this difference is freedom.

In this tip from the original Gentle Healing Year 1, Regina combines the teachings from GH Week One with this week’s reading in NTI Romans to show that a clear understanding of how we create experience can help us to undo our conditioning and motivate us to use our creative power in a way that is consistent with our desire to awaken.

Lesson 9, I see nothing as it is now.

The three most recent workbook lessons are “I see only the past,” “My mind is preoccupied by past thoughts,” and today’s lesson, “I see nothing as it is now.” The first three chapters of NTI Romans give some context for these workbook lessons.

According to NTI Romans, Chapter 2, judgment, which means decision, is the tool we use to create experience. This statement does not need to be taken on faith. This statement can be directly explored by watching our minds and experiences very carefully and noticing the relationship between them.

If I decide I don’t like someone’s attitude, what experience do I have?

If I decide that I have been rude and thoughtless, what experience do I have?

If I decide it should not be as hot/cold as it is outside today, what experience do I have?

If I decide I should not have eaten that piece of cake, what experience do I have?

If I decide to let all things be as they are, what experience do I have?

If I decide to focus on the consciousness in myself and every person I meet, what experience do I have?

It takes very little looking to see there is a direct relationship between judgment/decision and experience.

This teaching is also a review of last week’s reading assignment in NTI Luke Chapters 12, 16 & 17. That reading said that everything is given meaning by the thinker. We make an unevaluated judgment about something, and then that is the meaning it has for us. As Romans goes on to add, we then experience the effects of the unevaluated judgment we have made. This is a very simple summary of how we go about creating our experience, through one unevaluated judgment after another. NTI Luke also tells us that we then take an unevaluated judgment and reapply it when a similar set of circumstances arises. Or as the Course workbook says, “I see only the past.”

If we look, this process can be seen as true even if we adhere to the idea that the world is real and I am a person. Even in a ‘very real world’ as a ‘person’ at least the vast majority of my experience comes from my own decisions. However, both NTI Luke and NTI Romans take this further.

NTI Luke says that we experience separation because we decided things are separate from one another. We decided not to see them as whole. NTI Romans goes even further. In NTI Romans there is only one essence, which we might call ‘God.’ Within this essence, a creative question arose and was seen as having value.

There’s nothing wrong with that. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a creative God. What a wonderful step in the natural growth or evolution of all-that-is!

But according to NTI Romans, something went wrong when two ideas arose in this creative mind. One idea was to notice that everything created is still the essence of God, since the essence of God is all-that-is. This option would have allowed creative play alongside remembrance of truth. The other option was the idea that something major had just changed. The essence that was ceased to be and something else had come into existence. According to NTI Romans, the ‘caster of attention’ cast its attention on this second idea, decided this option was true, and truth was forgotten as attention began a very deep journey into fantasy.

Is this true? As I sit here as an apparent 56-year old woman in my living room typing on a computer keyboard, can I look and see if there is some truth to this story?

I can see this much. It is true that I make decisions by casting attention. Thoughts come into the mind. I do not actually ‘think’ them. They appear. Some of them seem to capture my interest, and I cast attention on them. Typically, casting attention is followed by a value judgment or decision. The first value judgment or decision is simply, “This idea is meaningful.” From there, attention goes more deeply into the idea and makes additional judgments like this is good or bad, I like it or don’t like it, I can allow it or I need to change it, etc. Regardless of what those follow on decisions are, they lead deeper into the game of that thought and that thought becomes a ‘real’ part of my ‘world.’

This is the exact process that NTI Romans just described, and I can see that this process plays out over and over again with my mind.

NTI Luke talks about “unevaluated judgments.”

NTI Romans refers to “judgment without basis.”

I feel like just looking at those two statements, contemplatively casting my attention there for a few moments.

The Commentary on Mind from The Teachings of Inner Ramana says that mind cannot be ignored entirely because it is the tool of perception. NTI Romans agrees with this if we see mind, judgment and decision as synonymous. Without mind, perception would not be. Mind (judgment, decision) is a tool that allows God to be creative. Again, there is nothing wrong with that. The problem comes from unevaluated judgments and judgment without basis. The problem comes from being on auto-pilot instead of being a conscious creator (caster of attention & decision maker).

“I see only the past.”

“My mind is preoccupied by past thoughts.”

“I see nothing as it is now.”

Everything I see comes from unevaluated judgments I have made topped off with reapplying that same unevaluated meaning when similar circumstances arise. That is judgment without basis, the cause of delusion.

“… all you need do is unweave your way out of fantasy. You reverse the ‘laws’ that made it by ceasing to play the game.”

Rest, accept/allow and trust. Let go of judgment without basis.

Lesson 8 “My mind is preoccupied with the past.”

This lesson starts with the statement “No-one really sees anything. He sees only his thoughts projected outward.” You may have heard the analogy that says, you think your eyes are receivers, but they are not. Your eyes project your thoughts. NTI says, you take a collection of your thoughts from past learning, learned from judgement and create your own version of reality. Since this collection of thoughts has no meaning because they are made up, unreal, illusory, you aren’t really thinking at all. This lesson says “The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything.” So thinking about the past, our judgments and our fragmented concepts that we believe is what keeps eternity at bay. NTI Romans,  Chapter 7 says, “Remember that the universe is a reflection of the past because it is a reflection of a past wish, a past belief in the mind. Remember that your truth waits outside this wish, and your truth is calling you Home.”

LESSON 7. I see only the past.

As this lesson points out, this is the reason for undergoing the mind training laid out for us in ACIM. Actually, it is mind “re-training” or purification.  What we are attempting to do is reprogram the brain to change/undo our conditioning.

Consider this discussion of neural pathways by Naturopath Sue Kira : “Have you ever noticed that when you drive to work or a regular place that you always go the same way even if there are alternate ways you could go? This is because you have created a neural pathway in your brain that has created this routine. Sometimes we even drive to this destination on ‘remote control’ as such. Often if I’m driving somewhere routinely I like to try going a different way, and then when I have made this change a few times, a new pattern occurs and I drive that way all the time. This has become the new neural pathway. It’s like how water always flows in the same direction that the first lot of water has run, but if that path is blocked then a new path is created. Our brains can do the same thing. Changing routines and doing things differently will promote these different pathways.”

It has been said that, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. We simply cannot expect to see differently if we continue to believe our thoughts. This is why we must allow our brains to be reprogrammed.  Let’s look at other ways we can reprogram the brain.

How to Reprogram the Brain (change/undo conditioning):

1. An open-heart increases efficacy. In other words, joy, forgiveness (knowing all is well), willingness, trust and a positive desire or spiritual aspiration (e.g., desire to heal, to know the truth, to be only love) increases your efficiency in reprogramming the brain. Note: If your goal is negative (such as to stop suffering) consider a positive goal (such as freedom or happiness). A negative goal actually keeps you focused on the negative (a closed hearted spiritual aspiration).
2. Repetition and practice with new programming such as resting the mind, remembering the daily lesson, thinking of your spiritual aspiration, etc. replaces the old programming with new programming. We have neural pathways that have become well worn by our habitual thinking. Thus, we must practice consistently in order to let those old neural pathways dry up and become replaced by new ones.
3. Visualization of ourselves using our practices will help form new neural pathways. For example, imagine yourself resting the mind, imagine yourself remembering to do the workbook lessons, imagine yourself wanting awakening/truth more than anything else, etc. The brain cannot tell the difference between something real and imagined. Research shows that anytime you are thinking, you are engaged in conditioning neural pathways. By imagining ourselves using these practices in relatively peaceful moments, when difficult situations, emotions etc. arise, we will have already begun creating the neural pathways that will allow us to make a different choice in those situations.
4. Meditation is concentrated rest away from mental activity. This concentrated rest helps the old habituated ways of being and seeing fade and make room for a new way of being and seeing. (Meditation will be introduced into our daily practice later.)
5. Observe/watch your old programming without feeding it. Be aware of it, but don’t believe it or fight against it. As you watch, become familiar with your triggers. For example, what does it feel like in your body just before an old neural pathway begins to fire? Slowing down and paying attention to what our triggers are and what happens when our triggers get hit will enable us to see it before it happens and enable us to make another choice. We are learning what our unconscious habits are so that we can change them.
6. Discover how you can stay motivated to stick with gentle healing because you want to. (Positive motivation.). If you don’t want healing more than anything else, you will not “stay in the room when the screaming starts,” which, as the Way of Mastery told us, is the commitment we must make in order to experience healing.

As Lesson 7 says, “everything you believe is rooted in time, and depends on your not learning these new ideas about it.” That is, everything we believe is based on our past “learning.” Until we become aware of those beliefs, they cannot be undone. The beliefs that need to be healed will come up to be healed. We need to see them anew from this healing perspective rather than simply reapplying the meaning we have learned to give them. This is why purification/undoing/mind training is necessary. Focusing on our commitment to healing and practicing the techniques listed above will keep us moving on the path toward healing rather than remaining stuck in the insanity of our conditioned thinking.

Lesson 6 “I am upset because I see something that is not there.”

Right off the bat Jesus lets us in on what is really going on in this lesson when he says…”it is necessary to name both the form of upset (anger, fear, worry, depression, and so on) and the perceived source very specifically for any application of the idea.” The PERCEIVED source. It isn’t the real source because the upset can’t come from anywhere or anyone but me.

Isn’t that what we just learned, “I have given everything I see…all the meaning it has for me.” So we take a perceived upset and find a reason for it. This is what ACIM calls projection. I have taken thoughts and things and assigned meaning where there was none and then blamed someone else for the false associations, which were my associations. Jesus is calling upon us to stop making these false associations. Your associations are different than my associations which again points to their falsity, but all of them are unreal and a new version of reality is made up. All these made up constructs keep us from seeing truly because projection makes perception.