Today’s review covers these ideas:
1. (6) I am upset because I see what is not there.
²Reality is never frightening. ³It is impossible that it could upset me. ⁴Reality brings only perfect peace. ⁵When I am upset, it is always because I have replaced reality with illusions I made up. ⁶The illusions are upsetting because I have given them reality, and thus regard reality as an illusion. ⁷Nothing in God’s creation is affected in any way by this confusion of mine. ⁸I am always upset by nothing.
2. (7) I see only the past.
²As I look about, I condemn the world I look upon. ³I call this seeing. ⁴I hold the past against everyone and everything, making them my enemies. ⁵When I have forgiven myself and remembered Who I am, I will bless everyone and everything I see. ⁶There will be no past, and therefore no enemies. ⁷And I will look with love on all that I failed to see before.
3. (8) My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
²I see only my own thoughts, and my mind is preoccupied with the past. ³What, then, can I see as it is? ⁴Let me remember that I look on the past to prevent the present from dawning on my mind. ⁵Let me understand that I am trying to use time against God. ⁶Let me learn to give the past away, realizing that in so doing I am giving up nothing.
4. (9) I see nothing as it is now.
²If I see nothing as it is now, it can truly be said that I see nothing. ³I can see only what is now. ⁴The choice is not whether to see the past or the present; the choice is merely whether to see or not. ⁵What I have chosen to see has cost me vision. ⁶Now I would choose again, that I may see.
5. (10) My thoughts do not mean anything.
²I have no private thoughts. ³Yet it is only private thoughts of which I am aware. ⁴What can these thoughts mean? ⁵They do not exist, and so they mean nothing. ⁶Yet my mind is part of creation and part of its Creator. ⁷Would I not rather join the thinking of the universe than to obscure all that is really mine with my pitiful and meaningless “private” thoughts?
(ACIM, W-52)