Lesson 17, I see no neutral things
This lesson is central to the Course’s goal of mind-training, what we have called reprogramming the brain. As we were told in yesterday’s lesson, given that the whole world is created and maintained by the thoughts upon which we cast our attention (“the thoughts we think we think”), there is no such thing as an idle thought. In addition, as we are reading in NTI Ephesians, there are no private thoughts because the creative attention we give to thought is fed back into the “central system” or the “mind” of the one.
My thoughts about anything are based upon what I think I know of that thing, person, circumstance from the past. Every pattern, concept, judgment I use to interpret the things I perceive carries with it all the prejudices, emotions and intellectual “understanding” I have garnered from the past. Not only do I continue to operate in a way that is consistent with my past “learning,” I continue to feed what I think I have learned back into the collective consciousness. (Note: I sometimes find it helpful to think of the one mind in this way—as collective consciousness. However, this description is flawed in that it suggests that consciousness is something that is formed by collecting together the many when, in reality, there is only one consciousness).
The lesson begins:
This idea is another step in the direction of identifying cause and effect as it really operates in the world. You see no neutral things because you have no neutral thoughts. It is always the thought that comes first, despite the temptation to believe that it is the other way around. This is not the way the world thinks, but you must learn that it is the way you think. If it were not so, perception would have no cause, and would itself be the cause of reality. In view of its highly variable nature, this is hardly likely.
We are reprogramming our mind (and the mind of collective consciousness) to see that those thoughts upon which we place our creative attention are the cause of the world we see. With this knowledge, we are motivated to see the results of those thoughts (the images of the world) not as evidence of reality or “how things really are,” but as a guide to the ideas we have allowed to flourish in our world by continuing to think them. Lesson 16 emphasized this point:
Besides your recognizing that thoughts are never idle, salvation requires that you also recognize that every thought you have brings either peace or war; either love or fear. A neutral result is impossible because a neutral thought is impossible. There is such a temptation to dismiss fear thoughts as unimportant, trivial and not worth bothering about that it is essential you recognize them all as equally destructive, but equally unreal. We will practice this idea in many forms before you really understand it.
If cause and effect were reversed, the images we see in the world would indeed be the cause of our experience. The images we see in the world would not be subject to change by changing our thoughts about them. Indeed, we would be the relatively powerless victims we have imagined ourselves to be, who can make very little impact on the world, who seemingly have little power to relieve the suffering we see “out there” and within ourselves. That is not who we are. We do hold the creative power, not only to change the world we see, but to let that world be entirely undone.
The emphasis for those of us who have embarked on this journey to Truth is on the undoing – the atonement (correction) – of the misperception of who we are in relation to the world and in relation to each other. The first step in this journey is seeing the power of our thoughts. We begin to undo the world by recognizing what we have done. “I see no neutral things, because I have no neutral thoughts.” We will not try to have neutral thoughts. That is impossible. All thoughts to which we give creative attention have effects—in fact that is the very point we are taught in this lesson. Rather, by seeing that we have created the world, we give our willingness to see beyond the illusions we have created to the truth of our being.
