 Today, we're going to continue with Jesus and the beautiful workbook of A Course in Miracles for the transformation of consciousness to, you might say, reach the tippy-top of consciousness where you teach and learn the happy dream or the real world through perception. And we have been going through the lessons starting with January 1st here and now we're on today 10. Today is Wednesday the 10th of January 2024 and we're smack-deb in the middle of this great awakening, this transformation of consciousness and so 10 is a nice number. We've made it up to number 10. I'd say the first nine lessons and this lesson are dismantling the ego-belief system. It's really Jesus cheering us on to begin to question everything that we desire, everything that we believe, everything we think, everything we feel, and everything that we perceive. Some of you know I have a book, it's really three books in one, but it's called Unwind Your Mind Back to God. And wow, that's the complete package of putting everything together in the mind training with explanations and examples of how to begin tracing things back to your mind and choosing again. And so when we go for this transformation, it is definitely a mind overhaul. This is definitely unwinding the mind completely from what it was believing before and what it was thinking before. And the old way of perceiving, we'll just say the past, clinging to the past and not opening our hearts and minds up to the light of truth, that has not served us. So the past is the darkness and the past is over and gone, but we have to really accept that. We can't leave any scraps of darkness hiding in the unconscious mind or hold on to any scraps of the past, otherwise we are not opening to the Holy Instant to the present moment. So as we start today, before we get into number 10 today, our lesson for the day, I thought I would just give a quick review of the first lessons that we've been going through. Starting off with nothing I see means anything, followed by I've given everything I see, all the meaning it has for me. I do not understand anything I see. Lesson number four, these thoughts do not mean anything. Then we got into our five, six, seven, eight rhythm there. Number five, I'm never upset for the reason I think. Number six, I'm upset because I see something that's not there. Number seven, I see only the past. And number eight, my mind is preoccupied with past thoughts. See isn't it great when we go through them and you hear them all together. You start to see there's an undoing happening here. Lesson number nine, I see nothing as it is now. And then today's lesson is my thoughts do not mean anything. Lesson number 10, this idea applies to all the thoughts of which you are aware or become aware in the practice periods. The reason the idea is applicable to all of them is that they are not your real thoughts. We have made this distinction before and we'll do so again. You have no basis for comparison as yet. When you do, you will have no doubt that once you once believed where your thoughts did not mean anything. This is the second time we have used this kind of idea. The form is only slightly different. This time the idea is introduced with my thoughts instead of these thoughts. And no link is made overtly with the things around you. The emphasis is now on the lack of reality of what you think you think. This aspect of the correction process began with the idea that the thoughts of which you are aware are meaningless outside rather than within and then stress their past rather than their present status. Now we are emphasizing that the presence of these thoughts means you are not thinking. This is merely another way of repeating our earlier statement that your mind is really a blank. To recognize this is to recognize nothingness when you think you see it. As such, it is the prerequisite for vision. Close your eyes for these exercises and introduce them by repeating the idea for today quite slowly to yourself. Then add, this idea will help to release me from all that I now believe. My thoughts do not mean anything. This idea will help to release me from all that I now believe. The exercises consist, as before, in searching your mind for all the thoughts that are available to you without any selection or judgment. Try to avoid classification of any kind. In fact, if you find it helpful to do so, you might imagine that you are watching an oddly assorted procession going by, which has little, if any, personal meaning to you. As each one crosses your mind, say, my thought about does not mean anything. My thought about does not mean anything. Today's thought can obviously serve for any thought that distresses you at any time. In addition, five practice periods are recommended, each involving no more than a minute or so of mind searching. It is not recommended that this time period be extended, and it should be reduced to half a minute or less if you experience discomfort. Remember, however, to repeat the idea slowly before applying it specifically and also to add, this idea will help to release me from all that I now believe. Beautiful. My thoughts do not mean anything. So in this transformation of consciousness, we are willing to first look at all the trains of thought that are moving through the mind. These are ego trains of thought. These are thoughts about the past and the future. Jesus told us in the text that no single instant does the body exist at all, meaning in the light of truth, in the holy instant. There is no body. There are no body thoughts. There are no thoughts of the world, a form based on the past or the future. There are no thoughts of the cosmos based on the past or the future, and these trains of past and future thoughts are defending the mind against the recognition of the present moment of the holy instant. Or we could say these trains of thought, when you give your attention over to these trains of thought, then you do not know the power of now. You do not know the power of the present because these thoughts are not the present. These are not our real thoughts. In the present moment, all of our real thoughts, the thoughts we think with God, are fully available and fully embraced. I am spirit is a beautiful example of a real thought. Or even I am, that's a real thought. But that is a spirit thought. That is a thought that comes from God. I am as God created me. There's a real thought. But the thoughts of the past and future are not real, and they are distracting us from our stillness, from our natural happiness and joy, from our inner peace. So some of you have practiced meditation, and you know that oftentimes a meditation instructor will say, just observe your thoughts. And that's what Jesus is really doing. He's teaching us Christ's meditation here in Lesson 10. Just observe the thoughts just as a, it's kind of like an odd procession. He called it that you just are watching go by. You might imagine that you are watching an oddly assorted procession going by, which has little if any personal meaning to you. So as you watch these trains of thought and you practice the lesson for today, my thoughts do not mean anything. Basically, you're just watching the thoughts, but you're not hopping on the trains. You see, there's a difference between watching the train, the train of thought and hopping on it. And as any good meditation teacher will tell you, when you, when you notice yourself hopping on a train, then hop off. Come back to watching, observing the thoughts. And this is a good first step in training the mind to just witness and observe these ego thoughts from my very detached place held up high by the Holy Spirit and Jesus. So you're not buying into the thoughts. And this is very, very important. These lessons are extremely important. There's nothing I will guarantee you. There's nothing in the world that is as important as the mind training of training your mind, disciplining your mind to open up to to God, to source, to true identity, to know thyself. There is nothing in the world that compares. In fact, all the past thoughts and future thoughts, all the goals of the world and all the pursuits are really just trying to run away from the light. And when you stop and are still and you open up to the light of how precious, how glorious, how beautiful it is. So it's just beautiful to be with you, sharing this. And actually, I thought today, I would pull from some writings from the Christ from Jesus that come in in some forms that sometimes you're not always aware of. I thought I would start off with a section from the clarification of terms today in A Course in Miracles. And then I thought I would shift over to the song of prayer and go through a section there called Forgiveness for Salvation. And then finally, up into the psychotherapy pamphlet, Purpose, Process, and Practice. And we could pop into a section there called The Purpose of Psychotherapy. So we're going to get a beautiful clarification of terms, section from Jesus called Mind, Spirit, Then Forgiveness for Salvation, True Forgiveness, a good lesson in what that is and what it means. And finally, the Purpose of Psychotherapy, using psychotherapy terms to come at the same glorious light in the mind that is the light of healing. So let's start with Mind, Spirit. Since we're talking about thoughts, we're basically being told today the thoughts I see, my thoughts are, do not mean anything. And so when we go to look into that a little bit deeper, we're going to get a little bit of context for that. Some of you know that I've had a process called Instrument for Peace that's based on the teaching that Jesus gave me called Levels of Mind, but basically the perceptual realm is the projection. And projection makes perception. So what is being projected are these emotions and feelings that are generated by the ego. So the Ring of Fear underneath the perceptual realm generates the perceptual realm. And then underneath the emotions are the thoughts. And that's what we're looking at in our lesson for today. There's meaningless thoughts, private thoughts that are producing fear and all of its derivatives, yolk, shame, pain, suffering of all time. And then a projected world that is a projection of those emotions. And we should say all even opposite emotions that seem to be inspired or coming from the ego belief system, basically even pleasure and pain, all of it is these emotions are being projected out as a perceptual world. And then underneath the realm of thought is the realm of belief. And that's where you shift your mind with the Holy Spirit's help from the belief system of the ego to the belief system of the Holy Spirit, which is forgiveness. And then underneath that is your desire or your prayer, the prayer of your heart, which is really what sets in motion the awakening, the redemption, the salvation. It's prayer. And Jesus taught us to pray. And he went off to the mount to pray and he prayed unceasingly to know God and did know God and does know God and is a very, very good instructor because of his knowing God and knowing the kingdom of heaven. So we start off with the manual clarification of terms with section number one, mind spirit. The term mind is used to represent the activating agent of spirit supplying its creative energy. When the term is capitalized, it refers to God or Christ, i.e. the mind of God or the mind of Christ. Spirit is the thought of God, which he created like himself. The unified spirit is God's one son or Christ. In this world, because the mind is split, the sons of God appear to be separate, nor do their minds seem to be joined. In this illusory state, the concept of an individual mind seems to be meaningful. It is therefore described in the Course as if it has two parts, spirit and ego. So we could say spirit, the unified spirit and the ego, which is the belief in private minds and private thoughts and bodies and fragmentation and the whole linear cosmos. Spirit is the part that is still in contact with God through the Holy Spirit who abides in this part but sees the other part as well. The term soul is not used except in direct biblical quotations because of its highly controversial nature. It would however be an equivalent of spirit, with the understanding that being of God, it is eternal and was never born. The other part of the mind is entirely illusory and makes only illusions. Spirit retains the potential for creating but its will, which is God's, seems to be imprisoned while the mind is not unified. Creation continues unabated because that is the will of God. This will is always unified and therefore has no meaning in this world. It has no opposite and no degrees. The mind can be right or wrong depending on the voice to which it listens. Right-mindedness listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its place. This is the final vision, the last perception, the condition in which God takes the final step himself. Here time and illusions end together. Wrong-mindedness listens to the ego and makes illusions, perceiving sin and justifying anger and seeing guilt, disease and death as real. Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks or forgives what never happened. Therefore, it is not the one-mindedness of the Christ mind whose will is one with God's. In this world, the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice, always between two choices or two voices. Will is not involved in the perception at any level and has nothing to do with choice. Consciousness is a receptive mechanism receiving messages from above or below, from the Holy Spirit or the ego. Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift dramatically but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest, it becomes aware of the real world and can be trained to do so increasingly. Yet the very fact that it has levels and can be trained demonstrates that it cannot reach knowledge. So, what I just read, how that relates to our lesson of the day, my thoughts do not mean anything, is that when the mind is asleep, it is only aware of meaningless thoughts, it's only aware of ego thoughts, it's only aware of private thoughts and these thoughts are of the past and the future and basically we can begin to realize that when we say my thoughts do not mean anything, we're just looking at every single thought that crosses the mind. This is the beginning of mind training because until there is no exceptions made to seeing this experience of the unreality of these thoughts, that the thoughts that cross the mind have no meaning whatsoever, until that point comes then the mind is just asleep and dreaming but its dream is basically the projection of these unreal thoughts and so what we just read in the clarification of terms in terms of the right mind and the wrong mind, the wrong mind is the experience of these private thoughts and these attack thoughts and judgments and past thoughts and future thoughts is being real and right mindedness sees that they're not, that's why right mindedness leads back to heaven, right mindedness leads to peace of mind, right mindedness is the thoughts that we think with God, the thoughts we think with the Holy Spirit, with Jesus and the whole point of training your mind is just to be consistently right minded which means to be consistently peaceful, happy, joyful in bliss that's the point of training your mind towards right mindedness so that little section there from the clarification of terms helps us get clear that that's why my thoughts do not mean anything is because they're egoic, they're flowing through, they're all past future thoughts and the Holy Spirit can still come through into your mind through consciousness as we read from, it's the ego that's from below and symbolically the Holy Spirit from above but the guidance and the inspiration of guidance comes from above and it inspires action so when you're in a miracle sometimes there's an action component and that's inspired so you feel happy and inspired when you're tuned into the Holy Spirit. Next we jump to the song of prayer and in this section we're going to look at is section three forgiveness for salvation because the whole point of becoming consistently right minded is forgiveness that's what forgiveness is forgiveness is the experience that none of the world or the thoughts of the world or the belief systems of the world are real so forgiveness is seeing the false is false and Jesus is calling this in section three of the song of prayer forgiveness for salvation, salvation of the mind restoring the mind to its wholeness to its completion forgiveness for salvation has one form and only one it does not ask for proof of innocence nor pay of any kind it does not argue nor evaluate the errors that it wants to overlook it does not offer gifts in treachery nor promised freedom while it asks for death would God deceive you he but asked for trust and willingness to learn how to be free he gives his teacher to whoever asks and seeks to understand the will of God his readiness to give lies far beyond your understanding in your simple grasp yet he has willed you learn the way to him and in his willing there is certainty you child of God the gifts of God are yours not by your plans but by his holy will his voice will teach you what forgiveness is and how to give it as he wills it be do not then seek to understand what is beyond you yet but let it be a way to draw you up to where the eyes of Christ become the site you choose give up all else for there is nothing else when someone calls for help in any form he is the one to answer for you all that you need to do is to step back and not interfere forgiveness for salvation is his task and it is he who will respond for you do not establish what the form should be that Christ forgiveness takes he knows the way to make him every call help to you as you arise in haste to go at last until your father's house now can you make your footsteps sure your words sincere not with your own sincerity but with his own let him take charge of how you would forgive and each occasion will then be be to you another step to heaven and to peace are you not weary of imprisonment god did not choose this sorry path for you what you have chosen still can be undone for prayer is merciful and god is just his is a justice he can understand but you cannot as yet still will he give the means to you to learn of him and know at last that condemnation is not real and makes illusions and it's evil name and yet it matters not the form that dreams may seem to take illusions are untrue god's will is truth and you are one with him in will and purpose here all dreams are done what should i do for him your holy son should be the only thing you ever ask when help is needed and forgiveness son the form the seeking takes you need not judge and let it not be you who sets the form in which forgiveness comes to save god's son the light of christ in him is his release and it is this that answers to his call forgive him as the christ decides you should and be his eyes through which you look on him and speak for him as well he knows the need the question and the answer he will say exactly what to do in words that you can understand and you can also use do not confuse his function with your own he is the answer you the one who hears and what it is what is it he speaks to you about about salvation and the gift of peace about the end of sin and guilt and death about the role forgiveness has in him do you but listen for he will be heard by anyone who calls upon his name and places his forgiveness in his hands forgiveness has been given him to teach to save it from destruction and to make the means for separation sin and death become again the holy gift of god prayer is his own right hand made free to save as true forgiveness is allowed to come from his eternal vigilance and love listen and learn and do not judge it is to god you turn to hear what you should do his answer will be clear as morning nor is his forgiveness what you think it is so this section is basically telling us to step out of the way completely if the thoughts if my thoughts are not real if my thoughts are meaningless the thoughts of time and space that discuss my mind then i need to pray and ask to be shown to be guided to to listen to see the innocence in myself and my brothers and sisters and and this is forgiveness for salvation so that's the point of the mind training that's why we're doing the workbook lessons of the course of miracles is is to step aside and let god take us into the light of truth into the holy instant and that is so valuable it's the it is all value sometimes people say yeah ecco tolly really talks a lot about the present moment and uh and jesus is cheering that on basically saying yeah it's the only thing that has importance that the present moment is the closest approximate approximate to approximation to eternity so basically if you are desiring to know god you're desiring to know eternity and you're desiring to let go of all beliefs in the near time and you do that in prayer you do that in meditation you come with holy empty hands unto the lord that i got how beautiful how beautiful that is and i'm going to take a sip of drink and now we're going to move to the psychotherapy pamphlet that jesus gave us so we're going to use psychological terms and psychotherapy terms now and the section i'm going to read from today is is called the purpose of psychotherapy so whether we call it forgiveness and salvation or whether we talk at the purpose of psychotherapy you can see the wording is different but the content is the same the purpose of psychotherapy very simply the purpose of psychotherapy is to remove the blocks the truth its aim is to aid the patient in abandoning his fixed delusional system thought system and to begin to reconsider the spurious cause and effect relationships on which it rests no one in this world escapes fear but everyone can reconsider its causes and learn to evaluate them correctly god has given everyone a teacher whose wisdom and help far exceed whatever contributions an earthly therapist can provide if there are times and situations in which an earthly patient therapist's relationship becomes the means through which he offers his greater gifts to both what better purpose could any relationship have than to invite the holy spirit to enter it and give it his own great gift of rejoicing what higher goal could there be for anyone than to learn to call upon god and hear his answer and what more transcendent aim can there be than to recall the way the truth in the life and to remember god to help in this is the proper purpose of psychotherapy could anything be holier where psychotherapy correctly understood teaches forgiveness and helps the patient to recognize and accept it and into his healing is the therapist forgiven with him everyone who needs help regardless of the form of his distress is attacking himself and his peace of mind is suffering in consequence these tendencies are often described as self-destructive and the patient who regards them in that way himself what he does not realize and needs to learn is that this self which can attack and be attacked as well is a concept he made out further he cherishes it defends it and is sometimes even willing to sacrifice his life on its behalf that would be suicide for he regards it as himself this small self sees and he sees as being acted on reacting to external forces as they demand and helpless miss the power of the world so again we can start to see how this relates to our lesson today number 10 my thoughts do not mean anything because basically these thoughts that are crossing the mind these trains of thought these streams of thought are all self-concept thoughts they're all imaged thoughts they're all personality thoughts personality thoughts and thoughts about the world that seems to surround the personality it's a giant self concept that involves the the personality and the belief in private minds private thoughts and linear time and a linear world that we call communities or countries or or planets or galaxies you know it it's the same it's all a projection the entire cosmos of time and space is a projection of these thoughts these streams of thoughts that are going through the mind thoughts of past and future and then we had Jesus reminding us constantly that the past is gone the future is but imagined and these concerns past and future are but defenses against present change of focus against these defenses of past and future are trying to keep you from knowing who you are now it's all a defense against the light it's all a defense against the present moment that's why you know if you want to devote your life to spiritual awakening devoted to being present that's what Eckhart is constantly saying be present be in presence you know that's the point of everything is the present moment right now is the healing release always it's never in the future and it was never in the past psychotherapy then must restore to his awareness the ability to make his own decisions to choose heaven he must become willing to reverse his thinking and to understand that what he thought projected its effect on him or made by his projections on the world the world he sees therefore the world he sees does therefore not exist until this is at least in part accepted the patient cannot see himself is really capable of making decisions and he will fight against his freedom because he thinks that it is slavery so it's like the patient goes into the therapist and is like here make my world better and the therapist is is trying to dispel illusions and dispel all thoughts and and it's usually a process of step by step where you know the patient goes to the therapist and the therapist says welcome happy to have you and this is our first session tell me a little bit about yourself and thus the patient begins describing the perceptual world that that is believed to be real and the therapist as guided by the intuition in the spirit will will help him unwind from that and begin to see that the self that that was believed in is not real never was real and the world and the perception of this self is not real and never was real the patient need not think of truth as god in order to make progress in salvation but he must begin to separate truth from illusion recognizing that they are not the same and become increasingly willing to see illusions as false and to accept the truth as true his teacher will take him on from there as far as he is ready to go psychotherapy can only save him time the holy spirit uses time as he thinks best and he is never wrong psychotherapy under his direction is one of the meanings he uses to save time and to prepare additional teachers for his work there is no end to the help that he begins and he directs by whatever routes he chooses all psychotherapy leads to god in the end but that is up to him we are all his psychotherapist for he would have us all be healed in him so wow we start off with lesson number 10 my thoughts do not mean anything and then we got a little sprinkling of mind spirit jesus giving us the overall context for spiritual awakening from clarification of terms and then we got a beautiful teaching on forgiveness for salvation very beautiful indeed from the song prayer and then from the psychotherapy pamphlet we finally moved into the purpose of psychotherapy so again you can call it forgiveness you can call it healing you can call it salvation or redemption you can call it awakening you can call it anything you want to call it you can call it absolutely anything you want to call it it's not in the words it's in the practice of letting go of illusions letting go of falsity letting go of the unreal you know this the introduction of a course in miracles ends with this course can be therefore be summed up in the following nothing real can be threatened nothing unreal exists herein lies the peace of god so so if you feel the energy of that you can feel the energy that the light that is underneath these first 10 workbook lessons of a course in miracles it's just saying you have a perceptual problem what does that mean you're perceiving a world that's not really there that's uh when we did our five six seven eight i'm i'm never upset for the reason i think is number five number six i'm upset because i see something that's not there so jesus is saying you you believe you separated from god you're hallucinating a world that isn't there and you're upset because you're seeing a world that isn't there instead of seeing the and everything in terms of the light of heaven your which is true vision vision of christ you're you're trying to see through a filter called ego that's incapable of seeing you know you've got some very very very dark sunglasses on in your mind because the ego filter is showing you nothing but hallucination and illusions and you're believing in them and that's where the upset is coming in so obviously to forgive is just to let go of everything you think you think everything you think you know and to hold on to nothing of the past because the past was a poor teacher of reality if if heaven is reached through the holy instant from from right now then anything of the past or of the future is basically distracting you from be still and know that i'm god you know as we read in the bible coming to the stillness of the presence of god's loving and know god in the stillness in the divine silence don't keep trying to cover over the light with thoughts of the past and the future all these cause effect relationships jesus just called them spurious cause effect relationships are the beliefs that things of the past cause the future or even things of the past cause the present the present is before time was as jesus thought us you know in the course in the bible before abraham was i am he's really saying no everything of time and space is part of the veil that you cover over your bright christ light and your bright happiness and joy of the living light the living light of the world the way the truth in the life that you are in reality that jesus demonstrated for us you know that is just being covered over by these meaningless thoughts you know in the in the workbook of a course in miracles in uh in workbook lesson 135 jesus tells us not to activate the past organize the present or plan the future wow that's a be still line you know imagine if you lived your life and don't you see that any stress or conflict or frustration that you seem to experience is just from trying to activate the past organize the present or plan the future and jesus is saying you can stop that you can pray to the holy spirit and the holy spirit will guide you using your meaningless thoughts to give you guidance to unwind your mind back to god so you see how practical guidance is and how practical your intuition is you need guidance how else are you going to unwind if you if you believe in hallucinations and jesus is saying let the holy spirit use those hallucinations those perceptions those symbols will call them symbols of time and space past and future let the holy spirit use those in a joyful way and they're always for the purpose of forgiveness for unwinding you're not here to build something new you're not here to to make something happen in the world you're not here to invent anything you're not here to forge or or promote something informed you're just here to let go of the world and be still and be happy and that's the beauty of of it all so yeah i i thank you for for joining me on this beautiful journey and uh yeah these workbook lessons are profound that's the best use of time of the belief in time is to give the belief in time and space to the holy spirit and say be you in charge you just give me the guidance what would you have me do where would you have me go what would you have me say and to whom show me lead me guide me let me sparkle today let me be used to bring the blessings of heaven uh in every interaction i have every single holy encounter let it be for a blessing and then you feel wonderful because to shine your light is the most natural thing jesus told us in the bible don't hide your light uh under a bushel you know he was telling us let it let it shine forth you've got nothing to be embarrassed about you've got nothing to be afraid of you've got nothing to be concerned with uh you don't have anything to worry about because you're giving over the symbols and the images of time and space to the holy spirit and saying have some fun today let's have some fun let's be playful let's be joyful let's as the bible says let's make a happy noise a beautiful noise for the lord thy god let's let's sing a happy song today let's have a happy tune in our hearts you know just skipping along and and following the prompt so as it'll inter nudges you will find that it's natural to be happy it's natural to be joyful it's natural to shine your light and to share miracles that you you don't shy away from the the word miracle worker you know who if not you then who and jesus is is going to send those miracles through your mind and let them radiate out to the whole universe because that is the only use of time that there is there's no need to try to achieve something in form accumulate something in form if you had any ambitions in form give them to the holy spirit and and the things that you seem to enjoy and like will be incorporated into the guidance that you receive so you can skip along and sing a happy song so thank you thank you thank you for being with me i see that we've had a whole group of us on live today 103 of us and how beautiful that we're starting out the day like this with a happy song in our heart and we're not going to let the ego try to slip slide us into oblivion we're going to go open up our hearts in the present moment to the kingdom of heaven within that's the mystical christ let's go inside to the kingdom of heaven and let's so go deeper than these meaningless thoughts by first just practicing the lesson today my thoughts do not mean anything i'm not going to get bent out of shape and i'm not going to get disturbed by nothing and these thoughts that i think i think that that flowed through my mind today i'm going to begin to look at them and laugh at them instead of taking them so serious okay beautiful god bless you and amen