Like a room without a roof
“My whole life has been an effort to find freedom—freedom from myself, freedom from my own fears.”—Helen Mirren
As a journalist, I was taught that the lede (the opening paragraph) of any story is my big chance to catch a reader’s attention. Tell them who, what, where, when and how—right up front.
Course in Miracles doesn’t do that. It tills the soil, prepares us slowly for the insanely radical notion that we’re not so much “observing reality” as we are creating it.
A few people have commented on the difficulty of previous lessons. A theme of sorts has emerged—How in the heck can I possibly believe my thoughts are meaningless?
So I’ll try to explain:
Any thought that falls into one of the following categories is basically meaningless:
Life is hard.
I’m separate and all alone.
I’m limited.
There’s not enough to go around.
I have to struggle.
I’m not worthy.
Every thought that falls into one of these categories is meaningless . It’s simply NOT TRUE. It only appears that way because we secretly (or not so secretly) put our attention there.
The first few lessons of the Course serve as a giant eraser to gently remove those meaningless thoughts. Then, there’s space to focus on all the things that actually ARE true.
Things like ease and grace, being connected to everything, experiencing great abundance, seeing that who I am is love, recognizing that my role here on Planet Earth is to be a big giant light to illuminate the dark places.
Lesson 16 (I have no neutral thoughts) is meant to dispel the belief that your thoughts have no effect. It goes so far as to say that there is NO EXCEPTION to this fact. And furthermore, every thought either furthers the illusion (the meaningless) or it furthers your role as creative light bulb.
I can’t stress enough how exciting this lesson is. We, my friends, no longer have to cope with what we observe out there. We don’t have to face reality. We get to create reality.
And with that, I’m signing off with one of my all-time favorite songs.
Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her new book, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious
