Lesson 10: My thoughts do not mean anything

One of the most important themes that recurs throughout the Course is the idea that our thoughts determine our experience.

In other words, what we experience in what we call “the real world” is not caused by the goings on in the world around us. We think events, other people, and our body are the cause of our experiences. But they aren’t.

A line from this lesson describes the focus: “The emphasis is now on the lack of reality of what you think you think.”

Just like when we’re dreaming at night. In the dream, it seems like things happen and we react to the various events. But when we wake up, we realize that nothing happened. The causes of all our experiences in the dream weren’t what other people were doing. The cause of everything was the dreamer’s thoughts.

And so it is with what we believe is going on while we’re awake. The cause of everything is our thoughts – having nothing to do with anything in the world or our body.

As we learned in Lesson 9 that we see nothing as it is now, so A Course in Miracles Lesson 10 is setting the stage for teaching us that our thoughts come from one of two teachers. Either the mind of the ego or the mind of spirit. And, if we’re honest with ourselves, pretty much all the time we’re choosing the ego mind. Which means that our thoughts don’t mean anything. Their sole purpose is to convince us that everything around us is real and can affect us. With the goal of keeping us mindless so we don’t return to our mind and make a different choice.

Were we to return to our mind and choose spirt, then our thoughts would lead us to a wonderful experience of meaningful love.