LESSON 19. I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.
Today’s lesson introduces the idea of “private thoughts.”
Today we are again emphasizing the fact that minds are joined. This is rarely a wholly welcome idea at first, since it seems to carry with it an enormous sense of responsibility, and may even be regarded as an “invasion of privacy.” Yet it is a fact that there are no private thoughts. Despite your initial resistance to this idea, you will yet understand that it must be true if salvation is possible at all. And salvation must be possible because it is the Will of God.
I have been associated with spiritual communities that have made “no private thoughts” part of their ground rules. I applaud their enthusiasm, but it is important to understand that we need not set ground rules for things that occur whether we like it or not. The truth is, we are all incapable of having private thoughts, because the body of Christ (consciousness) is one. What we would keep secret can never be. By our every thought, we ask for that which we would experience. Because there is only one consciousness with absolute creative ability, what we ask for is returned to us through that same consciousness. As we are told in NTI Ephesians 3:
When you think you are thinking alone, you are not. Your thoughts, which are heard by your brothers, are answered through them. This is the law of Love. This is why all things are Love. Only Love exists. Every experience that is given you is unequivocally the gift of Love given in answer to your request for Love.
In Kabbalah, we are told that God is a process and we are the process that is God.
The closest we can come to thinking about God is as a process rather than a being. We can think of it as “be-ing,” as verb rather than noun. Perhaps it would help us understand this better if we renamed God. We might call it God-ing, as a process, rather than God, which suggests a noun. …
We can relate to God as an interactive verb. It is God-ing. Moreover, from this perspective, creation should not be treated as a noun. It too is an interactive verb; it is constantly creation-ing. And, dear reader, you should not treat yourself as a noun–as Joan, or Bill, or Barbara, or John. With regard to God as an interactive verb, you are also verbs; you are Joan-ing, Bill-ing, Barbara-ing, or John-ing in relation to God-ing, just as I am David-ing. Each part in the universe is in dynamic relationship with every other part. (Rabbi David Cooper, “God is a Verb”).
NTI Ephesians 3 confirms we are the process of creation.
You are a being made in God’s image through the process of creation that is God. In this way, you are the same as He. The process that you are is what you are. It is your truth. It is how you live and exist. What you do through your mind is made and created, not alone, but in conjunction through oneness with your brothers. Your relationship with your brothers is so perfectly bound, free, and loving in its operation, that all you can truly give them is gratitude. For without your brothers, you would not be and you would not experience. Your very existence is extended and experienced through them.
As Regina Dawn Akers has said, “Love is spirit giving through spirit, to spirit, that which spirit requests.”
We are often told that everything that exists is One. If this is so, wouldn’t the one be the giver, receiver and the thing given? How could there be anything outside of this Oneness? How could there be a private mind outside of this Oneness? The truth is that the entirety of what is conspires to give us the experience we would have. It could not be otherwise. This is why there are no idle thoughts. This is why there are no private thoughts.
To assume we could have private thoughts is to deceive ourselves about the source of our experience. It is to assume there is something outside of us that could somehow be separate from us. In addition, it is to assume that there are thoughts of which we should be ashamed; thoughts that tell people more than we want them to know about us; thoughts that make us vulnerable. It is these thoughts we would keep private. The wish for private minds and private bodies is the wish for separation. Let go this wish and with full knowledge of the truth that there can be no private thoughts, choose carefully the thoughts which you would activate by casting your creative attention.
There is one body of Christ. There is one law that governs us all. That is the law of Love. In this law, we are blessed to receive as we have asked. We begin to ask for clarity on purpose, on truth and on love by giving attention to only those thoughts that speak of the same.
