A Course In Miracles Lesson 17

A Course In Miracles Lesson 17 states:

I see no neutral things.

Cause and effect are the topics of this lesson.  Not seeing neutral things means I inherently have an opinion about everything.  I either find it valuable or threatening.  My experience of people and the world around me is determined by the charge of my perception.   How I experience something determines how I respond to it.  How I respond determines what happens next.  

How I respond is never neutral.  What I see around me is not neutral to me.  I see no neutral things because I have no neutral thoughts.  How I think is how I experience this world.  The world does not exist outside of our thought perceptions.  If it did, that would mean physical objects were independent of a source and came from nothing, forever separate from the Unified Field of all that is.  Nothing can exist outside of or separate from the all-inclusive source of All That Is.  

The world does not exist outside of our thought perceptions and our thought perceptions are part of the Creative Field of All That Is.  It can not be otherwise.  If the outside world caused our thoughts, the world would be technically without a source.  That is an impossibility, but you are still free to believe it is possible.  No amount of believing in something untrue and impossible will ever lead to making it true.  What is true is always true, everywhere.  What is not true exists only in your mind as a misguided opinion or a false belief.

Perceptions do not cause reality.  Quite the other way around.  We are currently engaging in an experience of perceptions.  We do this while forever connected to an infinite state of knowing.  We have not “left” this Knowing state because it is not possible to leave it.  We have, however, turned away from our awareness of that Knowing in order to engage temporarily limited perceptions.  When we no longer wish to do this, we will find help out of the illusions we have made.  Today’s lesson is just such help.

Today’s lesson asks you to take a moment to observe the condition of your thinking.  You will find that you have no neutral thoughts.  You have an opinion and a preference towards everything you encounter.  To have perceptions is to have charge, opinion, limitation.  Because of this, you can not see neutral things.  You see only your opinions as well as other people’s opinions.  

These lessons are clarifying the distinction between perception and knowledge.  Knowledge is a state of being that has no need of perception.  Perception is a quality of experience based on the physical 5 senses.  Knowledge is meta-physical while perception is always only ever embodied in physical form.  To reach a full state of knowing, we must move beyond the physical limitations of form.  That is an inevitability we need not concern ourselves with.  These lessons are not teaching us how to become knowledge holders.  While that may happen, the focus of this course is to improve your physical experience of perceptions by guiding you away from painful logic and towards the logic path that ultimately leads to the knowledge of eternal peace.  It is not the goal of this course for you to embody eternal peace.  This course is to quiet a turbulent mind so that while in this world, our experience is as peaceful as possible and does not generate more pain.   A Course In Miracles calls this the development of the happy dream.

Give today’s lesson a try and shift your mind a little closer to being able to hold a happy dream in place for longer and longer.  The Universe wants your joy.  The ability to fully believe this is the capacity to let it happen for you.