 Hi everyone. Welcome again to another live Course in Miracles lesson and today's lesson will be workbook lesson number 16. I have no neutral thoughts. Also I received a question this morning so I thought I would address that question also after the reading of the lesson and then maybe do a little commentary, bring in again a little bit maybe a paragraph or two from from chapter 15 which has a lot to talk about in terms of the Holy Instant and and private thoughts. So we'll see how that all ties together with our lesson of the day. So today's lesson I have no neutral thoughts. The idea for today is a beginning step in dispelling the belief that your thoughts have no effect. Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact. Thoughts are not big or little, powerful or weak. They are merely true or false. Those that are true create their own likeness. Those that are false make theirs. So right away we're getting some great instructions on really what's going on in the mind, in consciousness and we could say that there's like a fog or a veil of thoughts which are private thoughts. They're just thoughts of the past and the future and they're thoughts of specifics. So basically all the thoughts that are part of the fog are the specifics and they've been made to cover over the real thoughts because the mind does have real thoughts and those are the thoughts you think with God that create those are creative thoughts like I am as God created me or I am spirit and those are purely abstract thoughts. Those are thoughts that are part of the light and so the whole point we're going into today is when you believe in this world then part of that belief system is the belief that my thoughts are just private little thoughts that I have in running through my consciousness and they have nothing to do with the world and most people would say yeah well I'm thinking one thing is one thing but actually acting on it is another thing or believing that it's real is another thing but actually what Jesus is going to teach us today is that you don't really have a context for your thoughts. So this is a great mind training lesson in thoughts. We've already been told that these thoughts don't mean anything in lesson seven and we've already been told in lesson 10 my thoughts do not mean anything so now we're going to take it a step further and realize that it's the beginning step in dispelling the belief that thoughts have no effect it's basically the belief that your mind is ineffectual when actually the mind is extremely powerful. There is no more self-contradictory concept than that of idle thoughts. What gives rise to the perception of a whole world can hardly be called idle. Every thought you have contributes to truth or to illusion either it extends the truth or it multiplies illusions. You can indeed multiply nothing but you will not extend it by doing so. So this is a beautiful paragraph basically a lot of times I've said over the years you know the world is nothing more than a motion picture of thoughts of ego thoughts it's a motion picture of private thoughts and so the real thoughts which are thoughts that we think with God you know my mind truly holds only what I think with God those real thoughts extend the truth they're they extend spirit that's what creation is it's spirit extending spirit is creation there's nothing to do with perception there's nothing to do with this world so he says you can indeed multiply nothing but you will not extend it by doing so this is really carrying on from what we've learned in the text that that what is real and true what comes from God is naturally extended God extended love and light and that was Christ and then Christ is pure spirit and Christ has extensions creations it's all a continuous line of creation spirit creates spirit creates spirit just like in the bible we talked in form of this this person family begat begat begat begat if you forever read the bible there's a lot of begats and this is Jesus teaching us well we tell you about spirit extend extend extend extend so you can indeed multiply nothing but you will not extend it by doing so one times zero is zero a million times zero is zero a trillion times zero is zero the ego is the zero so it doesn't matter if you multiply it by a trillion you have a trillion of nothing so you can indeed multiply nothing but you will not extend it by doing so only the thoughts of God can be extended that's that's a basic law of creation in heaven and that's something that's pushed out of awareness but it's it's coming back we're going to remember that if it's the last thing we do we will remember heaven and we will remember creation besides your recognizing that thoughts are never idle salvation requires that you also recognize that every thought you have brings either peace or war 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 that you realize you recognize them all as equally destructive but equally unreal we will practice this idea in many forms before you really understand it so it's essential that we recognize all of these private thoughts as equally destructive but also equally unreal private thoughts are thoughts that you try to think on your own apart from the whole apart from apart from God and so when we look at this world it's not only a perceptual hallucination it's not only a world of projected images of private thoughts my thoughts are images I have made it's a projected world of these erroneous or unreal thoughts and that's what we're learning with this workbook lesson my meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world oh that's good to know but also we just finished lesson 14 a couple days ago God did not create a meaningless world so God has nothing to do with this world so you don't have to be afraid of being punished by God because God doesn't even know of punishment you know punishment is an is an ego concept sin is an ego belief you can call it error if you want that's that is the ego it's an error that's already been corrected but you can't correct it if you hide it and you protect it if you push it out of awareness in the unconscious that's how you keep the ego you don't release the ego by keeping it out of awareness in applying the idea for today search your mind for a minute or so with eyes closed and actively seek not to overlook any quote little thought that may tend to elude the search this is quite difficult until you get used to it you will find that it is still hard for you not to make artificial distinctions every thought that occurs to you regardless of the qualities that you assign to it is a suitable subject for applying today's idea in the practice periods first repeat the idea to yourself and then as each one crosses your mind hold it in awareness while you tell yourself this thought about whatever an apple is a neutral thought this thought about my body is not a neutral thought this thought about my house is not a neutral thought this thought about my picture of Jesus back there is not a neutral thought it looks like the flower over there over here there we are this picture of this flower is not a neutral thought this bed is not a neutral thought you know you can you can let any thought that crosses your mind go through hold it in awareness for a moment and just tell yourself this thought about whatever the the thing person plays image situation object black hole galaxy aliens whatever whatever the thoughts are you know it's it's not a neutral thought as usual use today's idea whenever you are aware of a particular thought that arouses uneasiness the following form is suggested for this purpose this thought about what's filled in the blank this thought about my housemates is not a neutral thought because I have no neutral thoughts it's not about the weather is not a neutral thought because I have no neutral thoughts this thought about the the song that I heard on the radio or on the internet this morning is not a neutral thought because I have no neutral thoughts four or five practice periods are recommended if you find them relatively effortless if strain is experienced three will be enough the length of the exercise period should also be reduced if there is discomfort so again Jesus is is wanting us to to take it easy you know he's he's basically easing us in to this mind training we're only on lessons 16 now we're only on day 16 in the in the calendar year if you some of you are doing the lesson in conjunction with the calendar today today's January 16 so he's easing us in he's saying if if you do three practice periods with this and you start to feel just uncomfortable and a little bit of strain or stress in your mind stop there three is enough but if you feel pretty good then try four or five practice periods now you're starting to get a sense if you don't have any neutral thoughts that again we'll come back and and remind ourselves what Jesus just taught us that every thought we have either extends the truth or it multiplies illusion it either is a thought of light coming from the light and it's extending the light it's extending creation it's extending spirit or it's multiplying illusions so if you have a thought that doesn't come from God it it is just an attempt to multiply illusions you know we could talk about human beings or we could talk about men and women and children but but we know that there's like maybe like 7.8 billion human beings on planet earth i think it's growing a lot more than that it's growing every day but actually that's a good example of multiplying illusions that's example of multiplying the illusion or the thought of bodies 7.8 billion and and counting more more more on the way we're not in a population decline at this point you know it's it's still population growing even though the pandemic and all kinds of things have come it's still still growing and and Jesus is saying well let's just bring it back to the mind level whenever you're thinking private thoughts thinking thoughts of specifics thinking about specific things of the past that you remember or or specific things of the future that you project those are the private thoughts and those are multiplying illusions so we're getting closer to the mechanism what's going on in the mind what's going on in consciousness we've had a lot of great mystics and saints that have told us be still pray meditate silence your mind and we've tried different ones there's there's tm there's vipassana there's so many different techniques and kinds of meditation there's so many practices that are part of spiritual repetition rituals practices hail mary prayers and catholicism you know there's so much and now we have some great great great metaphysics where jesus is saying here try my workbook lesson out that'll be your form of meditation as you move through the day and i'm going to ease you into it and then as we move along you'll just go deeper and deeper in your mind training and you'll go deeper into the closeness of the light also we can start to realize that that whenever you think of anything you you have past considerations of it and there there are attached to whatever you think about uh preferences like if i use the word i used a little while ago apple you know it's not just an apple set apart from time and space and uh coming from an apple tree uh it's basically saying that if you believe anything specific for example an apple it's not neutral there are no neutral apples you you have subjective opinions and preferences about apples the kinds of apples that you like sweet ones or sour ones the kind that you like green apples yellow apples do you like red apples uh do you like small apples do you like large apples you know whenever you think of an apple there's no neutral thoughts associated with that apple as well as anything else in the cosmos and we're not just talking about the the big things you know there are no neutral galaxies there are no neutral solar systems and then you could go down to the tiny tiny tiny level there are no neutral molecules there are no neutral electrons and protons there aren't any even neutral subatomic particles there's an opinion associated a preference with that you talk about subatomic particles some people go what's that or i don't want you i don't even want to know what that is but that's a preference too there nothing is neutral in the cosmos in all of time and space Einstein said it's all relatives that's another way of saying that there's gradations there's levels there's preferences involved it's all relatives time space motion gravity everything all the laws of physics are are all relative and everything in perception is relative it's it's a private world of projected from private thoughts and so when you say you like something in your private world of the ego you can say i like this i don't like this i prefer this i don't like that i want pleasure but i want to avoid pain mm same thing that's right leisure and pain are the same you both are are attempts from the ego to reinforce the body as reality and the spirit is reality body is not reality so you can see how deep this goes and you can also see it applies to everything you ever thought you did or anyone else ever did or that you will do or anyone else will do if it sounds profound yeah this is really profound we got jesus christ giving us teachings on the mind now and how to escape the ego some spiritual teachers say the mind is the problem jesus is saying well the mind has thoughts and those thoughts either extend the truth or they multiply illusion so the mind's not the problem it's which thought system am i going to invest in the holy spirit's thought system of love which is eternal the eternal nature of thoughts of light and love or the ego's belief system and thought system of attack and defense of lack of guilt shame grief pain death you know that's the choice and in the end we're also learning that thoughts are not powerful or weak because because if thoughts are real they obviously are are important because reality is important god is reality love is reality peace is reality this is important and then when we start to try to divide up the unreal thoughts into big and small powerful and weak good and bad right and wrong all those kind of things that were are just ego judgments in the end morality is just like a stepping stone concept to coming to a pure heart blessed are the pure heart for they shall see god pure of heart so so ethics and morality those are nice stepping stone ideas but they're very much on the human level and what we're doing with Jesus is we're saying let's let's go beyond the horizontal plane let's go vertical let's go in alignment with god so i did have a question that was written into me by my friend jeff in minnesota and basically jeff's question is how might we experience light episodes and i don't think we're at the point we're not quite at that point yet of the workbook where jesus is going to talk about light episodes but he's going to talk about these little like little surrounding light around the familiar objects that you typically perceive and then this is is an introduction or you might say it's a stepping stone towards the vision of christ and when jesus talks about seeing in the workbook later on he'll say i'm determined to see and above all else i'm determined to see uh or i'm determined to see things differently above all else i'm determined to see things differently that's seeing he's talking about vision he's talking about christ vision he's not talking about this seeing but this is not seeing at all later on he'll talk more about that the body's eyes were made not to see the body's ears were made not to hear listen the body was made by the ego and is part of a trick so don't think the five senses are going to be helpful ultimately to find the vision of christ but they can be used by the holy spirit and that's part of a miraculous way of perceiving where we still perceive a world but we we have this feeling in us that that we're just looking on something that's false and it's it's wonderful when we when we're in the miracle it's absolutely wonderful so how might we experience quote light episodes i'm pretty sure it would be a mistake to look for them but that we might come to expect them in a non-personalized nature the same as a miracle it feels uplifting knowing that the possibility represents a hole in the fabric of time and space that we can literally and directly see the light so that's beautiful that's what i was just talking about that that these are like the the the preludes these are the forerunners to spiritual vision to let that and i be single or when helen shuckman was first taking down a course in miracles she started to use a term jesus was using a term the spiritual lie which later on he said now go back and change the spiritual lie to the holy spirit but in the early writings that's what it was and and it is a forerunner of of light of having a we'll say a pure kind of temporary but pure light episode would would be revelation and revelatory experiences are seeing the great rays capital g capital r uh the the the abstract love and light of heaven that's like a direct but brief contact with god and temporaries word too temporary brief direct contact with god that's what a revelation is and miracles are just a way of seeing the false is false happily seeing the false as false because that's the key to starting to realize that you have no neutral thoughts all thoughts of this world and time and space that are judged positively or negatively are are definitely not neutral and and we could say that this is jesus's attempt to set to dispel the belief in idle thoughts uh somebody says how's your meditation going uh it's some good quiet points there but i had some idle thoughts drifting in and out of my mind and jesus is like there are no idle thoughts these these thoughts you're calling idle thoughts are are are making the cosmos that you're perceiving they're making the world that you're perceiving they're making the body they're making everything in form so there are no idle thoughts and yet when we go deeper into that and we see where jesus is taking us again i'm going to just go back a little bit to uh to chapter 15 you know for for some of you that are familiar with jesus's text and of course in miracles you know that he he uses chapter 15 to chapter 24 to talk about special relationships and say that that is the major block to the kingdom of heaven to remembering the kingdom of heaven remembering god is you have to see special relationships for what they are and realize that they don't have anything that you want because you want god and god didn't make the special relationships the ego is ingenious it invented special relationships to take the place of of of a direct connection with god because the ego you know is dispelled in the light perfect love casts out fear the bible tells us so the ego made all these special relationships but also in chapter 15 he talks about the holy instant which is jesus's way of talking about the present moment and you know how much i talk about the present moment and almost all mystics and saints talk about the present moment uh out the modern day ones the old timers the one centuries ago the present moment the present moment the present moment jesus calls it the holy instant and basically that's what uh this chapter 15 and i'm going to quote again is so important because it's going to talk about the holy instant and and private thoughts and i talked about this earlier but i i like to talk about simplicity this is from the fourth section in in chapter 15 the reason this course is simple is that the truth is simple complexity is of the ego and is nothing more than the ego's attempt to obscure the obvious you could live forever in the holy instant beginning now and reaching to eternity but for a very simple reason do not obscure the simplicity of this reason for if you do it will be only because you prefer not to recognize it and not to let it go the simple reason simply stated is this the holy instant is a time in which you receive and give perfect communication this means however that is the time in which your mind is open both to receive and give it is the recognition that all minds are in communication it therefore seeks to change nothing but merely to accept everything so in that first paragraph here that i'm quoting from section four there of chapter 15 basically he's teaching us that the present moment is our gateway to eternity and it's the present moment is the moment when you can give and receive perfect communication but this communication is coming to you from the light from spirit and this perfect communication is you could say telepathic it's it's getting in touch with the real thoughts in the mind it's not just being soothed by a few words you know you are loved i am with you always even till the end of time you know the thoughts of the bible that jesus spoke our beautiful thoughts before abraham was i am but to actually have a direct communication in which you perfectly give and receive communication you have to come to this quiet moment this present moment and the way that you approach it is is this lesson that we're doing today i have no neutral thoughts it's starting to to give up the idea that you can categorize the thoughts of consciousness the thoughts of of the ego that you can categorize objects and images into a hierarchy of illusions that you can make some more important than others all of the thoughts of the past all of the thoughts of the future are the same their attempts to multiply illusions because the past and the future don't exist the present moment is all that there is is and if you go through the course you go through the workbook and and the and the text and the manual you'll see jesus has lot to say about this you know the past is gone the future is but imagine these concerns are but defenses against present change of focus he's wanting us to focus and appreciate our real thoughts the thoughts that we think with god he will have workbook lessons that he will repeat over and over my mind holds only what i think with god he will repeat these over and over he's encouraging us to get in touch with our real thoughts he's encouraging us not to make distinctions between false thoughts because false is false illusion is illusion there aren't better illusions than worth worth illusions there there aren't bigger ones and smaller ones there aren't uh there there just is no range to falsity when he says the false is false he means all of it is false his first lesson in the workbook is nothing i see means anything and he means by nothing he means nothing no thing no thing at all nothing no thing i see means anything it's their inventions everything was invented by the ego to blind us from the truth of i am to to blind us from the i am spirit recognition which is enlightenment so then he will move on into what we need to know in order to release these private thoughts he basically says uh how can you do this when you would prefer to have private thoughts and keep them that's the key word keep what can we put in place of keep how can you do this when you would prefer to have private thoughts and keep them let's try another word we want to release them we don't want to keep them we want to release them the only way you could do that would be to deny the perfect communication that makes the holy instant what it is you believe you can harbor thoughts you would not share and that salvation lies in keeping thoughts to yourself alone for in private thoughts known only to yourself you think that 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 you all of you together so perception was made by the ego perception is selective and the ego is saying oh what a great world we have here you can pick and choose you have the ability to choose spiritual teachers have have been sharing the idea that god gave mankind or human beings free will yeah well god god gave christ free will in heaven but human beings are all part of a destined prearranged script that's already written that they're just part of a a projected script that actually is not long it's actually one instant it's what jesus calls the unholy instant all of time and space is contained in one instant go to the workbook lesson it's in the future we're not there yet we're only on lesson 16 but there's a workbook lesson only an instant does this world endure and he's going to talk about that little tiny instant the unholy instant and he's going to ask us basically to overlook it and reclaim our true identity where holy instant not where it's when now there's no where involved in in identity but there is a there is now because now is the gateway to eternity so as he goes on in that section again the final i'll just read paragraph nine the necessary condition for the holy instant does not require that you have no thoughts that are not pure but it does require that you have none that you would keep so that's a big distinction you don't have to to try to prepare for the holy instant say as soon as i have no impure thoughts then then i'll be ready for you jesus and jesus is like no i'm ready for you now and you don't have to reach a state where you don't have any impure thoughts but it does require that you have none that you would keep so whenever you see preferences and judgments and grievances arising that's the time to just in your mind quietly just to say holy spirit i give this to you i give all of my apple thoughts to you holy spirit that i may know my real thoughts i give all my tree thoughts all my snow thoughts to you holy spirit that i may know my real thoughts it is giving you the instant you would have it atonement would not be if there were no need for it you will not be able to accept the perfect communication as long as you would hide it from yourself you know the final stage of the stages of development of trust and the final characteristic of a teacher of god in the manual for teachers is open-mindedness for what you would hide is hidden from you in your practice then try only to be vigilant against deception and seek not to protect the thoughts you would keep to yourself let the holy spirit's purity shine them away and bring all your awareness to the readiness for purity he offers you thus will he make you ready to acknowledge that you are host to god and hostage to no one and no thing host to god and not a hostage to anyone and anything not a hostage to this world not a hostage to the ego not a hostage to the false beliefs of this world whoo here we go host to god doesn't that feel good today i'm going to be a host who are you hosting god oh yeah he'll be sparkling with that one i'm host to god today i am host to god and hostage to nothing i am not at the mercy of anything i am not a victim of anything i am not powerless to anything of the world whoa does that undo undo the perceptual world ego has no answer to that host to god oh the ego is not pleased with that idea because that is a welcoming in your heart to love to divine love to eternal love okay wow well that was a good one i have no neutral thoughts and we just kind of unpacked that one okay thank you all for joining me again if you want to write in questions please do in any way that you want through a course of miracles question list on our mailing list if you're part of our living miracles mailing list or yeah you can find my email address on the internet and just send me an email if you want that's what my friend jeff did today and i wish you all a joyful day in which you are having a very still moment uh in the present moment and just watching all the thoughts and saying no i have no neutral thoughts i'm not going to buy into that one today okay