January 10, 2019
Helping to ameliorate any psychic storms traversing the globe are the monthly lunar rendezvous with far-out, Neptune in compassionate Pisces (4:48 p.m.) — magnified by a good-luck-endowed parallel between the sun and Jupiter (9:45 p.m.). Employ the power of positive thinking as a guard against losing faith since the approaching sun-Pluto conjunction reaches exactitude at 3:39 a.m. on Friday.
[Note to readers: All times are calculated as Pacific Standard Time. Be sure to adjust all times according to your own local time so the alignments noted above will be exact for your location.]
Thursday 10th January 2019 (UT Now is 20:39:18)
Current Moon Phase: Waxing Crescent (12 pi 16'12")
Planet, Centaur, TNO, Asteroid Aspects
01:02:26 UT - Psyche (5 cp 51'17") square Makemake (5 li 51'17" Rx)
02:33:03 UT - Sun (19 cp 32'30") conjunct Chariklo (19 cp 32'30")
05:11:41 UT - Waxing Crescent Moon - Sun (19 cp 39'14") semi-square Moon (4 pi 39'14")
05:15:42 UT - Jupiter (13 sa 40' 8") square Teharonhiawako (13 pi 40' 8")
05:46:48 UT - Pholus (1 cp 11' 2") sextile Rhadamanthus (1 sc 11' 2")
08:37:04 UT - Mercury (7 cp 53'51") trine Pelion (7 ta 53'51" Rx)
09:12:46 UT - Psyche (5 cp 59'15") trine Aphidas (5 vi 59'15" Rx)
10:32:06 UT - Psyche (6 cp 0'33") trine Albion (6 ta 0'33" Rx)
11:19:54 UT - Mars (6 ar 19' 8") opposite Logos (6 li 19' 8" Rx)
13:02:37 UT - Ceres (24 sc 37' 9") trine Manwe (24 pi 37' 9")
18:14:58 UT - Mean BML (17 aq 26'43") trine Asbolus (17 ge 26'43" Rx)
20:32:16 UT - Eris stations direct (22 ar 59'27")
Aspects of the Moon
00:07:08 UT - Moon (2 pi 9'31") sextile Quaoar (2 cp 9'31")
01:09:23 UT - Moon (2 pi 40' 6") square Venus (2 sa 40' 6")
05:11:41 UT - Waxing Crescent Moon - Sun (19 cp 39'14") semi-square Moon (4 pi 39'14")
07:38:05 UT - Moon (5 pi 51'15") quincunx Makemake (5 li 51'15" Rx)
07:51:41 UT - Moon (5 pi 57'56") sextile Psyche (5 cp 57'56")
07:54:30 UT - Moon (5 pi 59'19") opposite Aphidas (5 vi 59'20" Rx)
07:57:01 UT - Moon (6 pi 0'34") sextile Albion (6 ta 0'34" Rx)
08:34:47 UT - Moon (6 pi 19' 9") quincunx Logos (6 li 19' 8" Rx)
10:13:03 UT - Moon (7 pi 7'31") conjunct Nessus (7 pi 7'31")
11:47:05 UT - Moon (7 pi 53'49") sextile Pelion (7 ta 53'49" Rx)
12:15:35 UT - Moon (8 pi 7'51") sextile Mercury (8 cp 7'50")
13:36:39 UT - Moon (8 pi 47'47") square Huya (8 sa 47'46")
14:15:06 UT - Moon (9 pi 6'43") trine Typhon (9 sc 6'44")
15:11:11 UT - Moon (9 pi 34'22") sextile Lempo (9 ta 34'22" Rx)
16:42:17 UT - Moon (10 pi 19'16") sextile Orius (10 cp 19'16")
18:05:43 UT - Moon (11 pi 0'25") opposite Orcus (11 vi 0'25" Rx)
18:54:38 UT - Moon (11 pi 24'33") sextile Hylonome (11 cp 24'33")
19:48:46 UT - Moon (11 pi 51'16") square Eros (11 ge 51'16")
20:40:44 UT - Moon (12 pi 16'55") square Altjira (12 ge 16'55" Rx)
21:12:31 UT - Moon (12 pi 32'36") sextile Saturn (12 cp 32'36")
22:39:11 UT - Moon (13 pi 15'24") quincunx Thereus (13 le 15'24" Rx)
23:30:44 UT - Moon (13 pi 40'52") conjunct Teharonhiawako (13 pi 40'52")
23:48:07 UT - Moon (13 pi 49'28") square Jupiter (13 sa 49'28")
23:53:12 UT - Moon (13 pi 51'58") quincunx Elatus (13 li 51'58")
ACIM Workbook Lesson 10 Insights
“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.
CommentaryLesson 4 said, "These thoughts do not mean anything," and it promised the exercise would be "repeated from time to time in somewhat different form" (W-pI.4.3:1). This lesson is the first repetition. It explains that the reason the idea is true is that
all the thoughts of which you are aware…are not your real thoughts. (1:1-2)That is particularly difficult to accept at first. How can my thoughts not be my real thoughts? It explains that we don't have any basis for comparison as yet, but that when we do, "you will have no doubt that what you once believed were your thoughts did not mean anything" (1:5). So once again the Workbook is asking us, to a certain degree, to take this idea by faith for the time being.
A basis for comparison implies that before long we will experience our real thoughts, and when we do, we will know that what we believed to be our thoughts were not our real ones. It's like we've been eating carob all our lives thinking it was chocolate. Once we taste real chocolate, we know that carob was not chocolate; but until we have a basis for comparison, we can only take our teacher's word for it.
The difference between Lesson 10 and Lesson 4 is in the first word: "My thoughts" instead of "These thoughts." In addition, the lesson does not go on to link the thoughts with things around us, as Lesson 4 did: "They are like the things I see in this room." So the emphasis in this lesson is on the thoughts themselves: "The emphasis is now on the lack of reality of what you think you think" (2:4).
The third paragraph points out the different aspects about our thoughts that have been emphasized so far:
"Now we are emphasizing that the presence of these 'thoughts' means that you are not thinking" (3:2). This rephrases the earlier concept that our mind is simply blank. Before we can have vision, we have to learn to recognize nothingness when we think we see it.
- they are meaningless
- they are outside rather than within
- they concern the past rather than the present
The exercises given make it clear that what the Course is talking about closely resembles many Eastern meditation teachings. What is being cultivated is a kind of detachment from our "thoughts," becoming "the witness" or taking the position of an observer in regard to our thoughts. We watch the thoughts as if "you are watching an oddly assorted procession going by, which has little if any personal meaning to you" (4:6).
One book I read about meditation (Stephen Levine's A Gradual Awakening,1 a wonderful little book) used the analogy of watching a train going by, each car containing a thought or set of thoughts. "Oh, there goes a thought of hatred! There goes some worry. There is a carload of sadness." It also used the picture of watching clouds floating by in the sky, with the expanse of sky being the mind itself. Levine emphasizes that we do not let ourselves cling to any of the thoughts or allow them to drag us along with them, but likewise we do not push them away or resist them. If they are "meaningless," as the lesson says, we need not respond to them at all.
As you do this kind of mental exercise you become aware of your mind as something independent of the thoughts that appear to cross it. You dis-identify with the thoughts. They lose their emotional charge for you. The thoughts become less and less of a "big deal" to you. You begin to recognize the vast expanse of mind in which these thoughts come and go, and to realize that they have no effect on that "sky of mind" in which they float. Notice in the practice instructions that the pace is stepping up a bit. "Five practice periods are recommended" (5:2) in addition to using the idea during the day for any thought that distresses us.
The closing added thought can be helpful to reinforce our belief that what we are doing is really worthwhile. We may need such reinforcement, since the actual practice of the exercise may induce discomfort at times. It isn't comfortable to repeatedly tell oneself, "My thoughts do not mean anything." It may seem demeaning. So reminding myself that "this idea will help to release me from all that I now believe" (4:3) can be a needed step in strengthening our motivation to do the exercises. The Workbook is cognizant of how entrenched the ego is in our minds, and works with us very gently in its attempts to dislodge us from our fixed position.
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