I have no neutral thoughts.
This idea is an attempt to correct the mistaken belief that our thoughts have no power. On one level it is true they have no power, because they cannot change Heaven nor can they destroy God. Within the dream, however, which is what Jesus is speaking about here, our thoughts have tremendous power. Just imagine what our thoughts are capable of doing: literally make up a physical universe, and a physical and psychological self that dwells within it; this self then actually believes it exists in the universe. That is Jesus’ point in the first section of Chapter 31, “The Simplicity of Salvation,” when he urges us not to underestimate the power of our learning skill. Although that was a message originally meant for Helen Schucman, in response to her constant complaints, Jesus is saying to each of us: “Do not tell me you cannot learn this course. Do not tell me your mind and its thoughts have no power. Look at what your learning is capable of doing.” Here are his very clear words:
“What you have taught yourself is such a giant learning feat it is indeed incredible. But you accomplished it because you wanted to, and did not pause in diligence to judge it hard to learn or too complex to grasp.
No one who understands what you have learned, how carefully you learned it, and the pains to which you went to practice and repeat the lessons endlessly, in every form you could conceive of them, could ever doubt the power of your learning skill. There is no greater power in the world. The world was made by it, and even now depends on nothing else. The lessons you have taught yourself have been so overlearned and fixed they rise like heavy curtains to obscure the simple and the obvious. Say not you cannot learn them. For your power to learn is strong enough to teach you that your will is not your own, your thoughts do not belong to you, and even you are someone else.
Who could maintain that lessons such as these are easy? Yet you have learned more than this. You have continued, taking every step, however difficult, without complaint, until a world was built that suited you. And every lesson that makes up the world arises from the first accomplishment of learning; an enormity so great the Holy Spirit’s Voice seems small and still before its magnitude. The world began with one strange lesson, powerful enough to render God forgotten, and His Son an alien to himself, in exile from the home where God Himself established him. You who have taught yourself the Son of God is guilty, say not that you cannot learn the simple things salvation teaches you! (T-31.1.2:7-4:6)”
These are strong words, but upon their truth rests A Course in Miracles. Throughout the text, as well as at the heart of these lessons, is Jesus’ overriding emphasis on the power of our minds to choose against God, which fact alone contains the promise of salvation. The mind that housed the separation thought is the only power in the universe that can save itself. And yet it has been this power that the ego has seemingly and successfully stifled and silenced by its plan to make a world and body, rendering the Son of God mindless. Jesus’ purpose in A Course in Miracles is simple: restore to our awareness the power of our minds, that we may finally recognize our mistake, where it was made, and choose again.
Thus, this lesson reminds us that our thoughts are tremendously powerful.
Indeed, that is the problem. We believe — within the dream — that these thoughts have destroyed God, Heaven, and the Holy Spirit as well. We gave this belief such power — the power of guilt — that we had to deny the thoughts, project them out and make up a world, all as a defense against what the ego told us: the tremendous power of our minds destroyed Heaven. That is why guilt is such a central concept in A Course in Miracles, for it tells us we have committed the unmentionable sin: destroying God and His Love. Before we can understand these thoughts are literally nothing and have had no effects, we first must get in touch with the power these thoughts are having in our dreams. That is the purpose of this lesson.
(1:1-2) 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.
You should underline in multi-colors “Everything you see is the result of your thoughts”! This important sentence needs to be understood on two levels, as it means everything you see in terms of form, but also in terms of interpretation. Both are the “result of your thoughts.” Hence, on one level, since we believe we separated from God, we see all kinds of separate things: people, chairs, pencils, clocks, walls, etc. We see them as separate objects because they are the direct result, or the shadow, of our thoughts of separation.
On another level and even more importantly, for the purposes of A Course in Miracles and the workbook lessons specifically, we understand that it is not only what we see, but how we see it. Jesus makes it very clear in the text and manual that perception is interpretation (e.g., T-3.III.2:3; T-11.VI.2:5-6; T-21.in.1-2; M-8.1-4; M-17.4:1-2). We cannot separate our perception of “objective reality” from our interpretation of it, because they are one and the same. Again, it is not only what we see, but how we see it.
As Jesus explains in many other places, especially in the text, if you begin with guilty thoughts and guilt is rooted in our belief we betrayed Heaven and sabotaged God’s plan of creation, and thus demands punishment — those are the thoughts with which we will look out, the lens through which we look on everything. We will therefore see not only a separated world, but a separated world that will punish and betray us; a world in which there is no hope but only the despair of certain death. Thus we read, for example:
“The certain outcome of the lesson that God’s Son is guilty is the world you see. It is a world of terror and despair. Nor is there hope of happiness in it. There is no plan for safety you can make that ever will succeed. There is no joy that you can seek for here and hope to find (T-31.I.7:4-8 ).”
Further, as we monitor our perceptions and find ourselves becoming angry, anxious, or depressed, the cause will always be an interpretation of something we believe is external to us. The interpretation will directly follow from our secret thoughts, and if we accuse ourselves of betraying God, which is everyone’s secret sin, we must and will see betrayal all around us.
(1:3-7) 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.
The true thoughts that “create their own likeness” are the Thoughts of God – truth, love, spirit, etc. – which constitute Heaven. The ego’s false thoughts are of separation – guilt, betrayal, murder, death, suffering, etc. – and they will make their own likenesses as well. If these are our thoughts, we will then perceive a world in which all these things happen — to us.
As we proceed through these early lessons it will become increasingly clear that Jesus is trying to establish for us the causal connection between our thoughts and what we perceive: Our thoughts determine the world we see; ultimately, then, our minds are the cause and the world the effect.
(2:1) There is no more self-contradictory concept than that of “idle thoughts.”
Our thoughts cannot be “idle,” as in the popular expression, because they have the power either to create reality, our function in Heaven, or to make illusions, at least in our dreams. Inherent in the power to make illusions is the power to forget that we made them — the power of denial. When we forget we made them, we believe what we perceive outside is fact. That is why we shall never countenance anyone telling us that what we perceive is not what we perceive. We are so sure we are right about what we perceive in the world because we are so sure we exist. Since the world comes from that thought of separate existence, we have the equal certainty that the world exists the way we made it up and the way that we see it. Consequently, we would not at all be inclined to question our perceptions of ourselves and the world.
(2:2-4) 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.
What is interesting here is that Jesus specifically says perception of a world. He is making the distinction that thoughts do not give rise to a world, but to a perception of a world. He does not always make such distinctions, but he does here. He is essentially saying there is no world out there.
We are free within our dream to see whatever it is we want to see, as many times over as we want to see it. But that does not make it real. Extension is a term in A Course in Miracles that is almost always associated with the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit cannot extend nothing. In our insanity, however, we believe we can, and multiply illusions as well. Yet in truth they are all nothing. One times zero is the same as a thousand times zero.
(3:1-2) Besides your recognizing that thoughts are never idle, salvation requires that you also recognize that every thought you have brings either peace or war; either love or fear. A neutral result is impossible because a neutral thought is impossible.
In the next lesson Jesus will develop this even further by saying that what we see outside is not neutral because what we think inside is not neutral either. Jesus is thus telling us that what is important for salvation is recognizing the power of our thoughts — only within our dream, of course — and that there are only two thoughts in the split mind: the ego’s, which leads to war or fear, and the Holy Spirit’s, which leads to peace or love.
Therefore Jesus tells us first that our thoughts are not idle and are not neutral. Then he says there are only two thoughts. That makes it very simple, because our perceptions and interpretations can become quite complicated. For instance, we believe, as we shall see presently, that there are gradations of anger, such as “a slight twinge of annoyance” or “intense fury” (W-pI.21.2:5). In truth they are the same, because they come from one thought of separation. This is what makes everything so simple; not easy, but simple because everything is recognized as the same.
(3:3-4) There is such a temptation to dismiss fear thoughts as unimportant, trivial and not worth bothering about that it is essential you recognize them all as equally destructive, but equally unreal. We will practice this idea in many forms before you really understand it.
This is aimed at the “blissninnies” who say that God and love are truth, and everything else trivial and unimportant, not worth bothering about because it is an illusion. From the point of view of Heaven this is indeed the case, but in this world it is not so, and that is why Jesus says it is “a temptation to dismiss fear thoughts as unimportant.” We try to treat them as unimportant, telling ourselves that since A Course in Miracles teaches these thoughts are not real we do not have to pay attention to them. We then cover them with a blissninny smile and see only love and calls for love, wherein all will reach home as one happy chorus that sings a hymn of joy, and on and on and on, ad nauseam. However, we are not aware that we have dismissed the thought that we have destroyed Heaven. Within our deluded minds that is hardly trivial and unimportant, and so it cannot be denied if we are truly to let it go.
That is why Jesus says “it is essential that you recognize them all as equally destructive, but equally unreal.” Before you can see them as equally unreal, you first have to realize their destructive nature. In the text Jesus says that “what is not love is murder” (T-23.IV.1:10), and that love without ambivalence is impossible in this world (T- 4.III.4:6). If you add two and two, you get four: If love is not possible in this world, and what is not love is murder, then all thoughts in this world are murderous and equally destructive, whether a thought is a mild twinge of annoyance or a thought of outright fury that says: “I want to destroy you.” We clearly are talking only about what goes on in the wrong mind, but within that wrong mind all our thoughts are “equally destructive” — there is no hierarchy of illusions, as we have already observed.
This one paragraph is extremely important. You should read it very carefully and see how, even though you may not think of yourself as a blissninny, it is tempting to fall into the trap of dismissing your ego thoughts. Jesus certainly is not telling us to obsess about the ego or make its thoughts into a big deal; after all, they are inherently unreal. But it cannot be said often enough that before you can dismiss these thoughts as unreal, you must first look at what they are. This point is strongly and often emphasized in the text where, for example, Jesus says:
“No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are protected. There is no need to shrink from illusions, for they cannot be dangerous. We are ready to look more closely at the ego’s thought system because together we have the lamp that will dispel it…. We must look first at this to see beyond it, since you have made it real. We will undo this error quietly together, and then look beyond it to truth (T-11.V.1:1-3,5-6).”
The next paragraph is about mind searching, a central theme throughout A Course in Miracles. This term occurs in Jesus’ instructions to us in almost all these early lessons, where he accentuates the importance of looking within our minds at our thoughts. Again, if we are not aware of what is there, how can we bring them to him for help and for correction?
(4) In applying the idea for today, search your mind for a minute or so with eyes closed, and actively seek not to overlook any “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.
This is yet another example of Jesus teaching us there is no order of difficulty in miracles. A miracle undoes problems regardless of their form, because they are all the same. We must realize that even our seemingly unimportant thoughts conceal the enormity of the ego thought system, as do the so-called major thoughts. “Artificial distinctions” would be deciding, for example, that one thing is important, another is not; or that this little annoyance is not important, but the grievance I hold against this person really is.
The last two paragraphs of this lesson repeat the same gentle instructions we have been seeing in the lessons so far, indicating once more the need for us to apply the idea for the day to each instance of discomfort we experience:
(5-6) 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 ___________ is not a neutral thought.
That thought about ___________ is 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 ___________ 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.
We are thus gently and kindly trained in the healing process of looking at our thoughts, especially learning to become aware of those that produce uneasiness. We most likely had not allowed ourselves to feel discomfort, let alone recognize its source of guilt in our minds.
