ACIM Workbook
Healing Perspectives

Lesson 10

“My thoughts do not mean anything.”

It is our beliefs that imprison us. It is our beliefs that stand between us and the knowledge of our oneness and the Love of God. It is our beliefs that manifest as the images that make our world. The good news is that we can change our beliefs because we made them. The idea, “My thoughts do not mean anything” helps us to step back from our thoughts, to dis-identify from them so that we can become open to recognizing that they are simply the effects of our beliefs. Gradually we become aware that there is something behind the thoughts of which we are aware. There is a cause and the cause is our beliefs.

The thoughts will continue to occur as long as we maintain the beliefs. We may hide our beliefs from ourselves and create all kinds of smokescreens to deceive ourselves into thinking that we have no responsibility for what we are perceiving. But that does not change the fact that what we perceive is the effect of our beliefs. We see it because we believe it. As we can step back from the thoughts and observe the beliefs, we are then free to change the beliefs. As long as we hide them, we cannot change them.

Lasting healing comes with changing our belief that we could be anything but one with the Love in which we were created. The first step is to loosen our identification with our thoughts because as long as we believe that our thoughts are our identity, we will resist changing them. We interpret changing our ideas as equivalent to death, because it means the loss of what we believe to be our identity. It is not surprising that there is great resistance to change. Today’s idea offers a gentle tool to loosening this identification. We do not have to believe it, we just have to practice it. As we practice these lessons, it will do it’s healing work of its own.

It may seem personally insulting to tell ourselves all through the day, “My thoughts do not mean anything,” but in fact it is an important step in the process of freeing our minds from all false ideas. The Course tells us that truth is true and nothing else is true. The Course tells us oneness is real and separation does not exist. The Course tells us that all our experiences of conflict come from our belief in separation. The Course tells us that we must be willing to let go of these false ideas in order to know our true Identity as a thought of Love in the Mind of Love.

So this lesson is very important in the healing process of undoing all our false ideas. In truth it is not insulting. Telling myself all through the day, “My thoughts do not meaning anything,” helps me loosen my hold on false ideas of separation that never were true. It frees me from the prison house that I put myself in when I bought into these thoughts.

I am willing to practice today remembering that my thoughts do not mean anything. This is my path to freedom. This is my path to remembering that I am in Heaven and I never left. Dreams of separation really mean nothing, no matter what I think is true. Truth is true and nothing else is true. Oneness and Love are true and nothing else is true. All thoughts about a world of separation are meaningless. They are not true.

The thought for today is so valuable when we think about issues of unworthiness. All of those thoughts that we’ve collected over our lifetime mean nothing and all of those thoughts that tell us that we are unworthy -- we don’t look good enough, we didn’t say the right thing, we didn’t do the right thing, we didn’t do it good enough, we shouldn’t have behaved that way. Recognizing these thoughts mean nothing leaves us with a clean slate for Spirit to show us the truth of what we are. Recognizing that my thoughts do not mean anything and that they are not my real thoughts gives me great hope and peace as I realize this practice will release me from all that I now believe.

What wonder, joy and beauty await me on the other side of “My thoughts do not mean anything.” As I release my attachment to and identification with my thoughts and as I stop bringing the past to the present, I open a clearing for new thought. I open a clearing for Christ’s Vision to be written upon my blank mind. As I stop giving meaning to everything I see, I allow Christ’s Vision to and Spirit’s meaning to flood my life with true creation, the extension of Love. To behold the beauty of forgiveness through Christ’s Vision is what awaits me as I practice all my thoughts mean nothing. I await this freedom joyfully and I accept the new meaning Christ’s Vision will lay upon my world of forgiveness.

There is only one thought today that has any meaning for me and that is to be as God created me -- nothing more, nothing less -- just that, to realize that existence as best I can here with the help of Holy Spirit. I am willing to let all other thoughts go. I don't know what this means, but I trust I can realize my True Self, my true existence, for this is reality what I am.

But True Self has been hidden under layers of ego thought which do not mean anything. They merely disguise the Real Me that I have been afraid to see, to know. There is still a part of me uncertain and nervous about what it would really mean to be the Real Me. I realize this thought does not mean anything -- it is merely fear projecting itself. Of course, I am the Real Me, part of the Oneself, for how can I be anything else but what God created. Yet, ego mind keeps It pushed away as if It were unreal.

Today, Holy Spirit, help me see my meaningless thoughts and let them go. Cleanse my existence of all that does not serve Love. Help me see my True Self so I may begin to live more fully the happy dream of awakening now. Help me see the layers I think I have heaped over my True Self and I now believe are true. Help me see the untruth of my ego truth that I may truly serve Love as a conscious choice.

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