 I was reading something this morning that really hit me in this communication word search it says, and it's something that I'd like to talk more about because we've talked a lot about private thoughts and private minds and stuff but I'm not sure that we've ever really got into that very deeply as far as what that really means because I think it means more than having a secret. I have a sense that it goes a lot deeper than I even realize but it said, you believe you can harbor thoughts you would not share and that salvation lies in keeping thoughts to yourself alone or in private thoughts known only to yourself you think you find a way to keep what you would have alone and share what you would share and then you wonder why it is that you are not in full communication with those around you and with God who surrounds all of you together I just thought it would be helpful maybe to have a session or to at least begin to address what he's really talking about when he goes into private thoughts what that really means because I think that relates to getting caught up in the ego stuff private thoughts, personal thoughts I would guess that they're the same thoughts of myself as a person as part of the private thoughts but not all of them There are some early lessons that really talk about initially lessons 4 and 10 start off with the ideas of thoughts lesson 4 is these thoughts do not mean anything Can we maybe make a distinction versus regular thoughts and private thoughts No you can't They're all the same All unreal thoughts are private thoughts That's what we can when we go into it deeper to see that all thoughts, unreal thoughts are private thoughts All specific thoughts Why isn't this a lovely rainy day or why isn't this a lovely sunny day doesn't seem to be an attack thought necessarily or a particularly condemning thought but those are private thoughts just the mind is thinking in terms of specifics and seeing a specific world which is describing why isn't this a lovely rainy day or why isn't this a lovely sunny day and that's private world that doesn't exist because it can't be shared that's why all thoughts of this world are private thoughts Make a thought of the ego It doesn't matter if I tell everybody So why is it called private? Not because it's kept to yourself and not spoken Everyone who seems to walk this world seems to see a world that seems to be an objective world which everybody lives in but the world can't be shared because it's all private thoughts They're all specific They're all images The mind that's forgotten abstraction is the mind that's forgotten pure oneness and now it's thinking in terms of images and these images can't be shared We've talked about at times where there seems to be common elements where it seems like there's agreement on certain things like colors and trees and roads and all kinds of different things like that and then it seems like there are perceptions like we've talked about when people talk about politics or a number of different topics or we've even talked about the example when people go to movies and they come out and they have all these different opinions Everybody seems to have different opinions about everything Those are more obviously private thoughts Personal opinions seem to be private because it seems as if everybody has a different opinion on things There's some areas of commonality or you could say areas of agreement but there certainly are always areas of differences So private is distinguished from what can be shared and what's perceptual can be shared and all private thoughts are perceptual because they will be related So even if there's agreement it's still private thoughts Even if there's agreement you can agree on like our discussion in the logistical session you could agree on certain things about having a meal together on Friday nights or coming together on what you can do about cooking the food or using up the food and all this and that and it's all private thoughts It goes much, much, much, much deeper than that because the mind that's seeing a world is seeing a world that's totally unique that is seed-minded If you broke it down to the metaphor that there were separate egos or separate minds no separate mind sees the same world They all see a uniquely subjective world with their many, many, many variations There seems to be some common elements but those are not That's the hallucination that they're because there aren't private minds So really the only thing to use your distinction about sharing versus not being sharing private thoughts cannot be shared and thoughts of God can be That's what creation is That's what extension is That's what it means to share the thoughts of God to extend them outward They increase as creation means ever increasing but not in a quantitative form There's nothing that increase doesn't mean the same thing in heaven as it means on earth on earth it always has a quantitative component as if it's multiplying or increasing in numbers and that's not the meaning of the word in heaven There's a paragraph in Lesson 10 that summarizes some of the main points in the first ten lessons and first paragraph he says they are not your real thoughts when the lesson is my thoughts do not mean anything it's just saying that's from an ego perspective when we say my thoughts this is an early lesson and the third paragraph summarizes some of the main points in the first ten lessons this aspect of the correction process began with the idea that the thoughts of which you are where are meaningless outside rather than within and then stress their past and present status now we are emphasizing that the presence of these thoughts means that 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 there's an awful lot of impact into that paragraph the mind the deceived mind thinks it's thinking all the time and that it's thinking meaningful thoughts it thinks that the thoughts that are passing through conscious awareness are important in some way and they aren't he's saying right off the bat that they are meaningless outside rather than within that's the distinction later on says picture your mind is a vast circle surrounded by a heavy layer of dark clouds you could think of the surrounded by the heavy layer of dark clouds as all these private thoughts that make up the world surrounded by a heavy layer of dark clouds that's why they're outside rather than within within this vast circle would be nothing but light and then a layer of dark clouds on the outside would be the the private thoughts the attack thoughts and then stress their past rather than their present status within this circle the circle of light is the present all these private thoughts are the past the earlier lesson lesson number eight is my mind is preoccupied with past thoughts that's what this statement is just summarizing thoughts that seem like real thoughts the mind is thinking about all day or just past thoughts which produce a past world a world or a script that is already over as well and then finally he says that now we are emphasizing that the presence of these thoughts means that you are not thinking your mind is really a blank so to kind of go with what Rhonda said it is much deeper than communication ideas of holding no secrets I mean we have we have to go so deeply with this and that's why when we have these sessions it's such a precious opportunity to take whatever it is even if it seems general or less specified or if there's a specific upset that's going on even if it's a minor one it's so important to start to throw them out in the table not because that specific event or specific situation is important in and of itself but because we have to use everything to start to get aware of the of the process of sinking down beneath them and starting to see that in the metaphysical sense that they don't mean anything not just the specific circumstance but the all the thoughts of which the mind seems to be aware of the other general feeling I mean it's just exactly what it says you know it's like because you know the whole warning when I try to be quiet and meditate it's like it's just my mind is just full of past and future just past when I read a lesson then I was one of those times when I just kept reading the same sentence over and over again and I had no idea what I was reading it took me like 45 minutes to read two pages because my mind was just off and I didn't even always know to try the way that it was off on something I think it's helpful to just point out again that as we keep going into this stuff to the ego it is frightening and it will employ all kinds of maneuvers you know some of them we've talked about you know we've discussed the whole idea of kind of seeming to like I was talking about last night the logistics of kind of just kind of moving out kind of incorporating around it can seem a little safer to to kind of carve out a niche I mean that's what the private ones anyway