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.”