How to change our thoughts
A Course in Miracles unequivocally states that working with our thoughts is the key to liberation. Every single experience we have is qualified by our thoughts. A “good” experience is something that happened which we’ve judged, with our thoughts, to be positive. Similarly for bad. Hence the Course’s council, “It is with your thoughts that we must work if your perception of the world is to be changed.”
But how? We can’t just think different thoughts on command, right?
The first step is understanding the source of thought, which is the mind. Not the brain, housed in the body. Mind is another realm entirely, outside of time and space.
The Course describes two components of mind: ego and spirit. In each moment we’re choosing one or the other; the choice dictating our thoughts.
If we’re having thoughts of judgment, anger, fear, or lack, then we can be certain we’ve chosen ego mind. Loving, gentle, inclusive, warm thoughts flow from choosing the mind of spirit. As the Course encourages, “Change but your mind on what you want to [experience] and all the world must change accordingly.”
So how do we make such a consequential, freeing choice?
Ken Wapnick offered a most practical prescription: catch our ego-based thoughts and look at them without judgment. That’s it.
Notice the anger. Notice the fear. Notice the judgment. And then simply rest in the awareness that caught it.
When we do this, something shifts. Our thoughts naturally move from sorrow to serenity. Not because we forced them to change, but because we’ve shifted which mind we’re operating from.
The practice is being the loving witness to whatever arises in experience. Not forcefully trying to fix it or change it or make it go away. Just watching with gentleness.
That’s how thoughts change. By changing the mind that thinks them.
Join me in Thursday’s class where we’ll explore this practice of gentle witnessing and discover the peace that emerges when we catch having chosen the ego mind. I look forward to seeing you then.