Purpose is meaning. Today’s idea explains why nothing you see means anything. You do not know what it is for. Therefore, it is meaningless to you. Everything is for your own best interests. That is what it is for; that is its purpose; that is what it means. It is in recognizing this that your goals become unified. It is in recognizing this that what you see is given meaning.

If you don’t know what something is for, it’s meaningless?  I guess that’s reasonable!  If you know what something is for, it has meaning.  Purpose is meaning.  OK.

Isn’t that such a crappy thought, that everything is for your own best interests?  I know it’s true, but I my ego likes it not!!  So whatever happens to me, even though I don’t know the meaning of it, it is for my own best interests.

But what are my interests?  Didn’t the last lesson say I don’t know what they are because the outcomes I want are conflicting?  I know.  “My best interests” have nothing to do with my egoic desires.  (Darnit!!)

You perceive the world and everything in it as meaningful in terms of ego goals. These goals have nothing to do with your own best interests, because the ego is not you. This false identification makes you incapable of understanding what anything is for. As a result, you are bound to misuse it. When you believe this, you will try to withdraw the goals you have assigned to the world, instead of attempting to reinforce them.

I knew that was coming.

Another way of describing the goals you now perceive is to say that they are all concerned with “personal” interests. Since you have no personal interests, your goals are really concerned with nothing. In cherishing them, therefore, you have no goals at all. And thus you do not know what anything is for.

True!  We are not isolated from one another like the egoic mind would have us believe.  What we do for ourselves, we do for all humankind, whether we realize it or not.  We’re not just doing it for ourselves.  It has an effect beyond ourselves.

Before you can make any sense out of the exercises for today, one more thought is necessary. At the most superficial levels, you do recognize purpose. Yet purpose cannot be understood at these levels. For example, you do understand that a telephone is for the purpose of talking to someone who is not physically in your immediate vicinity. What you do not understand is what you want to reach him for. And it is this that makes your contact with him meaningful or not.

We don’t understand what it is we want to reach him for because the expectations we place on the end result are always conflicted.  We think we know why we want to reach that person, but if we stop to reflect on “why”, we realize that much of what we want to happen has nothing to do with the event.

It is crucial to your learning to be willing to give up the goals you have established for everything. The recognition that they are meaningless, rather than “good” or “bad,” is the only way to accomplish this. The idea for today is a step in this direction.

I don’t think ACIM is saying that there is a fate to accept because accepting reality is not the same thing as accepting fate.  Whether the choice brings us success or not does not matter.  The end result is not important.  It is the choosing that matters.   That goes along with saying that the goals we have created are meaningless.  It’s not the goal that matters (materializes).  It’s the choosing that does.

• I do not know what this dog is for.
• I do not know what this computer is for.
• I do not know what this knitting needle is for.  (That one seemed strange – but I think I finally get it!)
• I do not know what the bookshelf is for.
• I do not know what this book is for.
• I do not know what this body is for.

In no situation that arises do you realize the outcome that would make you happy. Therefore, you have no guide to appropriate action, and no way of judging the result. What you do is determined by your perception of the situation, and that perception is wrong. It is inevitable, then, that you will not serve your own best interests. Yet they are your only goal in any situation which is correctly perceived. Otherwise, you will not recognize what they are.

If you realized that you do not perceive your own best interests, you could be taught what they are. But in the presence of your conviction that you do know what they are, you cannot learn. The idea for today is a step toward opening your mind so that learning can begin.

We have a tendency to make demands of situations that have nothing to do with the situation.  Our expectations are contradictory, and that is what causes disappointment.

There is a difference between making things happen and allowing things to happen.  Surrender is about allowing things to happen.  But do not confuse this with impotence.  It is not the same at all.  We still have the power to choose and our choices continue to make our perceived reality.  Recognizing that we do not perceive our own best interests simply helps us to become more aware of the choices we are making.

I don’t even have to do these exercises to know my expectations are contradictory!  I have teenagers.  Need I say more?

• In the situation involving my 18 year old son moving out on his own, I would like him to succeed and I would like him to fail.

That’s awful, isn’t it?  But if I’m absolutely honest with myself, it’s also absolutely true.  I want him to succeed so that life will go the way he hopes it will go.  But at the same time, I want him to fail to prove that my concerns are warranted.  If he fails, it will be reason to pursue a college degree.

By having placed so much emphasis on my desire for my son to get a college degree, I am not allowing things to happen, I’m manipulating things (usually subconsciously until I realize what it is I’m doing) to get things to go the way I want them to go.

When my son was little, I was much better about surrendering to his developmental schedule.  My friends were uptight about weening, potty training, and keeping their kids in their own bed.  None of this worried me.  My son didn’t have a crib, he slept in our bed which was extremely convenient because I was a nursing mom.  I didn’t have to wake up to feed him, he was right next to me so all I had to do was roll over.  I was nursing in my sleep.  My son weened himself around 3 1/2 years and it was a painless process.  He started sleeping in his own bed around the same time and that was painless, too.  One day he decided he wanted to sleep on his own and so he did.  We were never particularly hyper about potty training, either.  He didn’t go from diapers to training pants.  He urinated or pooped on himself a few times (which required a bit of cleaning on my part, but it didn’t last long) and he decided for himself he’d rather use the toilet.  We didn’t have to pay him a dollar every time he pooped in the toilet like a lot of our friends were doing.   And we never had any problems with bedwetting.  The transition from diapers to toilet was totally painless.

We decided to homeschool for similar reasons.  The schools put unnecessary pressures on kids, like expecting them to read in kindergarten.  This is not necessarily developmentally appropriate for every kid.  Some kids don’t start reading until they are 9, but when they start, they are already reading at or above a high school level.   School tries to mainstream individual development and individual development simply cannot be mainstreamed.  (Our son was reading at above an 8th grade level by the age of 4.  My daughter took quite a bit longer to start reading and has turned out to be a much more avid reader than our son.)

Anyway, I have always trusted my son’s individual level of development.  So why am I am I having so much difficulty with his desire to move out on his own?  I am totally conflicted.  And I know I do not perceive my own best interests.  I don’t perceive his, either.  All of my concerns are based on past experiences that do not pertain to his situation. He is making way more money than I ever dreamed of making when I was a teen. He’s being promoted to a full-time position and moved to a South Austin store that will get him out of conservativille, smack dab in the music scene of Austin where he has always dreamed of being.  If I try and hold him back in order to get that college degree, I know I am simply demanding he follow the rules of the same pattern that has held me back for so many years.

I have to let him go.  I guess that’s hard for a mother to do.  Especially when she’s been so incredibly close to her child all of these years.  But life has always been better for both of us when I let him “be”.  When I try and hold on and make him what it is I want him to be, that’s when the heart ache occurs.

It’s his life to live, not mine.

I do not perceive my own best interests in this situation.

If the cause of the world you see is attack thoughts, you must learn that it is these thoughts which you do not want. There is no point in lamenting the world. There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effect will change automatically.

But I don’t wanna give up my attack thoughts!!

My 18 year old son and I are a lot alike which is sometimes wonderful because we typically understand one another on a very deep level.  However, being so much alike can create serious friction.  He is a free spirit which is what I always wanted him to be.  But sometimes his free spiritedness makes me extremely mad, especially when I perceive him to be rude, which is quite often these days.  I get so angry and have some pretty horrible attack thoughts which don’t make me particularly loving.

There are two ways to stand up for yourself:  1) through attack thoughts that push people away; or 2) with genuine respect for the self and the other.

I got up early this morning to make sure my son got to work on time.  He was exhausted after having worked a 12 hour shift yesterday so I knew it would be difficult for him to get up for his 5 AM shift.  I woke him up, made him coffee, put it in a “to go” container.  He came downstairs grunting and complaining about being hungry.  So I found something I could make quickly and put it in a bag next to his coffee.  He couldn’t find his shoes so went cussing around the house in search of them, and then left with out his food and coffee and also with a “good bye”.  I was so pissed because this happens too much, lately.  I don’t like being treated like this.   So I chose to go into attack mode.   I told him that if he ever treats another female this way, I will be eternally ashamed of him.  Which, of course, isn’t true.  I wouldn’t be eternally ashamed of him.   If I don’t like being treated in that way, I don’t have to attack the poor kid.  I could simply cheerfully refrain from making him coffee and food in the wee hours of the morning if he doesn’t appreciate it.

But, I attacked.  And all day, what did I see?  A crappy, sucky attack world.

You see the world that you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image maker. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause. This is what salvation means, for where is the world you see when its cause is gone? Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them, even though they were made of hate. For you will not be making them alone.

“Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them so that you will love them, even though they were made of hate.”  I think this is crucial!  I tend to go into self-bashing mode when I react the way I did today.  I start hating myself for being so faulty and unloving which just makes things worse.  But if I can look upon the entire incident with love and light (that cliche usually makes me cringe, but it works here) then I am able to move beyond the patterns that set this sort of situation up in the first place.  The self-bashing keeps me stuck within them.

The idea for today introduces the thought that you are not trapped in the world you see, because its cause can be changed. This change requires, first, that the cause be identified and then let go, so that it can be replaced. The first two steps in this process require your cooperation. The final one does not. Your images have already been replaced. By taking the first two steps, you will see that this is so.

I see that it is so.  I’m viewing the entire situation with my son completely differently now than when I started this lesson.  It’s like a huge weight has been removed!  Yes, as Walt Whitman says, I carry the burdens of patterns from my past with me, but like Whitman, I have the ability to transcend them.  I always tend to think of perfection as the goal, but there is no goal because there is no end destination.  We’re all in process.

Once we are willing to accept things as they are, we can change them.  But not until then.

• I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts about my son.
• I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts about the CBE testing my daughter has to go through.
• I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts about my inability to walk without pain.
• I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts about being overweight.
• I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts about my imperfections.

Today’s idea accurately describes the way anyone who holds attack thoughts in his mind must see the world. Having projected his anger onto the world, he sees vengeance about to strike at him. His own attack is thus perceived as self defense. This becomes an increasingly vicious circle until he is willing to change how he sees. Otherwise, thoughts of attack and counter-attack will preoccupy him and people his entire world. What peace of mind is possible to him then?

It is from this savage fantasy that you want to escape. Is it not joyous news to hear that it is not real? Is it not a happy discovery to find that you can escape? You made what you would destroy; everything that you hate and would attack and kill. All that you fear does not exist.

All that I fear does not exist because it will not last.   I used to work for a man whose parents had been in concentration camps during the Holocaust.  They both managed to get out alive, thankfully, and apparently they both lived very happy lives afterward.  This somewhat angered my boss.  He couldn’t understand how they could be so forgiving about what had happened to them.  It was as though he carried the anger and hatred for them.  He most definitely was not a happy human being.

But can you imagine what it must be like for someone who survives that sort of horror?  Why would you want to bring it with you into the rest of your life?  It doesn’t mean that you forget about everything that happened to you.  That’s impossible.  ACIM is not teaching us how to deny our experiences.  Just the opposite.   It is allowing us to recognize that we have the courage to face whatever happens to come our way.

It is we who create our perceptions.  They are not somehow dumped on to us, even when something as horrible as the Holocaust occurs.  There are experiences that are much more difficult to transcend than others, because they are so incredibly psychologically intense.  But we do create a vicious circle and savage fantasy when we insist on holding on to attack thoughts.  If my boss’s parents had held on to their attack thoughts, they would have been living out that horrible experience for the rest of their lives.  I’m not sure what my boss thought he’d change by being angry for them.  He was always miserable about what was going on in his life.  And for what?  His parents suffering during the Holocaust simply because they refused to suffer afterward? I don’t mean to minimize his suffering.  I realize there were major repercussions on the generation that directly followed those who survived the concentration camps.  But how long do we continue to insist on dragging past experiences into our present before we realize that they no longer exist?

“You made what you would destroy; everything that you hate and would attack and kill. All that you fear does not exist.”  This isn’t mystical mumbo jumbo.  It’s just plain practical.  We’ll keep dragging the vengeance of the past along with us until we are willing to realize that it is we who are giving the world all of the meaning it has for us and that we have the power to change the meaning if we are willing to have the courage to take responsibility for it.  The blame game doesn’t solve anything.

• I see only the perishable.
• I see nothing that will last.
• What I see is not real.
• What I see is a form of vengeance.

Close your eyes and search your mind carefully for situations past, present or anticipated, which arouse anger in you. The anger may take the form of any reaction ranging from mild irritation to rage. The degree of the emotion you experience does not matter. You will become increasingly aware that a slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury.   Try, therefore, not to let the “little” thoughts of anger escape you in the practice periods. Remember that you do not really recognize what arouses anger in you, and nothing that you believe in this connection means anything. You will probably be tempted to dwell more on some situations than on others on the fallacious grounds that they are more “obvious.” This is not so. It is merely an example of the belief that some forms of attack are more justified than others.

The worst evil begins small, so it all matters.  It’s strange to think that we don’t realize what arouses anger in us.   But I think it is true that even slight twinges of annoyance hold within them an intense fury.  I’ve been especially recognizing this during my son’s older teen years.  I see it in him, and I see it in myself.  We are constantly acquiescing – trying to be what it is we are “supposed” by stuffing down the disappointment of not allowing ourselves to be who it is we are.   Our egos are always trying to live up to an image of who we have been told we are supposed to be and we NEVER live up to that image.  Nor do others live up to that image.  It’s a sure recipe for the blame game.

I am determined to see things differently.

• I am determined to see my son differently.
• I am determined to see his missing his curfew – again! – differently.
• I am determined to see my husband going out of town on my birthday – again! – differently.
• I am determined to see my dog’s barking at random noises in the house differently.
• I am determined to see my messy house differently.
• I am determined to see my daughter’s desire to wear high heals differently.

This is our first attempt to introduce structure. Do not misconstrue it as an effort to exert force or pressure. You want salvation. You want to be happy. You want peace. You do not have them now, because your mind is totally undisciplined, and you cannot distinguish between joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, love and fear. You are now learning how to tell them apart. And great indeed will be your reward.

We can see any situation differently if we are first willing to recognize that we don’t see clearly.

I am determined to see.

The idea for today is obviously the reason why your seeing does not affect you alone. You will notice that at times the ideas related to thinking precede those related to perceiving, while at other times the order is reversed. The reason is that the order does not matter. Thinking and its results are really simultaneous, for cause and effect are never separate.

Thinking and its results are really simultaneous, for cause and effect are never separate.  (Needed to repeat that to myself.)

Today we are again emphasizing the fact that minds are joined. This is rarely a wholly welcome idea at first, since it seems to carry with it an enormous sense of responsibility, and may even be regarded as an “invasion of privacy.” Yet it is a fact that there are no private thoughts. Despite your initial resistance to this idea, you will yet understand that it must be true if salvation is possible at all. And salvation must be possible because it is the Will of God.

When you begin to realize that your thoughts are not truly private, it does make you feel far more responsible for what is going on in your head.

I read a book called Mirroring People by Marco Iacoboni not too long ago.  It’s about something called mirror neurons.  Iacoboni is a neurologist and calls his research on mirror neurons existential neurology.  Iacoboni claims that there is scientific evidence of our interdependence and that the reason we have so much difficulty accepting this is based upon faulty philosophies that have been handed down to us for hundreds of years.  He says the most dominant view in Western culture in thinking about the mind originates from a position that goes back to Descarte: that the starting point of the mind is the private, individual, solitary act of thinking. But according to Merleau-Ponty, “I live in the facial expression of the other, as I feel him living in mine.” And Wittgenstein: “We see emotion… We do not see facial contortions and make the inference that he is feeling joy, grief, boredom. We describe the face immediately as sad, radiant, bored, even when we are unable to give any other description of the features.” According to Iacoboni, mirror neurons explain how the existential phenomenologists got it right and Descartes got it wrong.

I’m not so sure how Iacoboni’s research would fit the idea that thinking and its results are simultaneous.  But I suppose it would still make sense.  Iacoboni says that scientists and philosophers have long believed that we recognize an emotion before we feel it.  But Iacoboni’s research shows that it is actually the other way around.  We feel the emotion before we recognize it.  The feeling of the emotion shows up on our face and others mirror our facial reaction which makes them feel what it is we are feeling and so it goes.  This often goes completely unnoticed by us.    Obviously, how we choose to perceive things is going to create an emotional reaction within us that others will read and so it goes.  We think the cause and effect are separate, but they are simultaneous.

• We are not alone in experiencing the effects of our thoughts.
• I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts about studying biology.
• I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts about the sirens that are blaring.
• I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts about feeling each other’s energy.
• I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts about my dog needing to go to the restroom.

Especially since a dog doesn’t “go to the restroom”!  (It’s raining outside and she has to go out but won’t.)

It’s strange to think that other people are experiencing these sorts of thoughts!

I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.

The idea for today is another step in learning that the thoughts which give rise to what you see are never neutral or unimportant. It also emphasizes the idea that minds are joined, which will be given increasing stress later on.

We do pick up an each other’s energy.  The other day I was in one a pissy mood.  I mean a really pissy mood!  We have a faulty dryer that requires being turned on a kazillion times in order to get one load of clothes dry.  We invariably end up with mountains of laundry and clothes that need to be soaked in vinegar because they are left wet in the washing machine too long thanks to clothes not drying in the dryer.

Our dryer is upstairs which makes it extra difficult for me because I have trouble going up and down the stairs on my crappy ankle.  My teenagers aren’t particularly responsible when it comes to taking care of their clothes, especially my son!!! So yesterday, I decided to do stuff upstairs so I could get on top of some of the mountains of laundry.  I’d been turning it on over and over and over again for hours and was cussing every time I had to get up and turn it on again (something like every 10-15 minutes).  When it came time to fold clothes, I broke down in tears at the sight of my husband’s socks.  Apparently, he had been putting them aside for me to sort and I HATE sorting his socks.  I’ve been doing it for 20 years, for God’s sake.  He came upstairs and I told him I wasn’t going to sort his socks anymore because I HATE his socks.

This could have blown into something ugly had he responded ugly.  But he didn’t.  He asked me what his socks had ever done to me and told me his socks loved me.  They were really sad that I said I hated them and their feelings were hurt.  He pulled out his drawer and started sorting them himself while dancing and periodically mimicking a kiss to his socks while apologizing to them for what I had said .  I went from crying to laughing so hard I could barely stand it.

Apparently, even my husbands socks are involved in the effects of my seeing.

Today’s idea does not refer to what you see as much as to how you see it. Therefore, the exercises for today emphasize this aspect of your perception.

• I am not alone in experiencing the effects of how I see my husband’s socks.
• I am not alone in experiencing the effects of how I see the dryer.
• I am not alone in experiencing how I see the effects of my the mountains of laundry.
• I am not alone in experiencing how I see the effects of my dancing husband.

I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing.

This idea is another step in the direction of identifying cause and effect as it really operates in the world. You see no neutral things because you have no neutral thoughts. It is always the thought that comes first, despite the temptation to believe that it is the other way around. This is not the way the world thinks, but you must learn that it is the way you think. If it were not so, perception would have no cause and would itself be the cause of reality. In view of its highly variable nature, this is hardly likely.

If you happen to lose your job, you can respond, “Oh no, I lost my job, the world is horrible”.  An alternative response would be, “I lost my job, what can I learn from this.”

Neither is a neutral thought.  The thought “the world is horrible” is a cause that will create an effect as is “what can I learn from this?”   We can’t always control what happens to us, but we can control (to a large extent) how we perceive what happens to us.

• I do not see a neutral cup because my thoughts about cups are not neutral.
• I do not see a neutral rocking chair because my thoughts about rocking chairs are not neutral.
• I do not see a neutral cat because my thoughts about cats are not neutral.
• I do not see a neutral pillow because my thoughts about pillows are not neutral.
• I do not see a neutral statue because my thoughts about statues are not neutral.
• I do not see a neutral potato because my thoughts about potatoes are not neutral.

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. 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.

Every thought either extends truth or it multiplies illusion.

• This thought about my messy house is not a neutral thought.
• This thought about my dog tearing the stuffing out of her monkey is not a neutral thought.
• This thought about how tired I am of allergies is not a neutral thought.
• This thought about my daughter getting up at a decent hour is not a neutral thought.
• This thought about my son having left the Wii in the middle of the den is not a neutral thought.
• This thought about my son creating a recording studio in his room is not a neutral thought.