My favorite paragraph from today’s lesson is this one:

The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything.

Pause for a moment, and notice now is now. Then continue to pause, and see if you can find the end of now. Is there an actual boundary where now ends and becomes the past or the future?

If you look at your direct experience, you’ll notice that now never ends. It has no boundary. It is eternal.

Now doesn’t move. Experience comes and goes, just as thoughts come and go, but now is eternally unmoving and present.

Now is real. Yet most people miss now entirely, because they are thinking about the past or imagining the future. An important key to true perception is learning to recognize the reality of now, and to give attention to this present fact.

Do you have a clock or watch with a second hand? If so, try this exercise:

Watch the second hand as it moves around the face of the watch or clock. Notice the second hand moves, but now doesn’t move. Keep your attention focused on the unmoving now as you watch the second hand. Notice now is eternally present and absolutely real.

 Regina’s Tip for Lesson 9

The three most recent workbook lessons are “I see only the past,” “My mind is preoccupied by past thoughts,” and today’s lesson, “I see nothing as it is now.” These statements are true because of the decisions we make about what we see and experience. We make unevaluated decisions all of the time, and then we experience the world through those decisions. That means we aren’t experiencing a person, a thing or a situation as it is. Instead, we experience our past decisions about that person, thing or situation.

You can see this for yourself by paying attention to your experience. For example:

If you decide you don’t like a certain kind of person—for example, someone who talks a lot, or someone of a particular race, religion or political leaning—what experience do you have when you meet someone of that type?

If you decide that certain behaviors are unacceptable—such as being drunk, swearing or talking loudly in public—what experience do you have when someone does that?

If you decide it shouldn’t be as hot or as cold as it is outside today, how do you experience today’s weather?

If you decide that it’s bad to eat certain foods, how do you experience yourself when you eat them?

It takes very little looking to realize there is a direct relationship between the decisions you’ve made in the past and the way you experience things now. What you see and experience now is the effect of your past decisions.

Regina’s Tip for Lesson 10

Today’s workbook lessons says:

“’My thoughts do not mean anything,’ is applicable to all of the thoughts you become aware of, because those thoughts are not your real thoughts.”

NTI Luke 12 says:

“In every moment in your seeming interaction with the world, you are focused on thought. And because you see yourself as a separate entity within the world, you are focused on thoughts that seem to be generatedwithin the private mind that belongs to you.”

Both readings point to this:

You are not who you think you are, and the thoughts that speak to you as if you are this person, are illusions.

That is why your thoughts are meaningless. They appear to be self-centered, self-referencing thoughts, but the self they are centered on and referencing is not who you are.

Regina’s Tip for Lesson 11

The tip for lesson 1 defined mistaken perception as “perceiving and interpreting the world through a self-centered mental filter, known as the ego.”

Yesterday’s tip pointed out:

“You are not who you think you are, and the thoughts that speak to you as if you are this person, are illusions.

“That is why your thoughts are meaningless. They seem to be self-centered, self-referencing thoughts, but the self they are centered on and referencing is not who you are.”

NTI Luke 12 says:

“Right now, you think you are focused on the world. … Even your thought that you are focused on the world is an illusion within the mind. What you are focused on, and have always been focused on, is thought. In every moment in your seeming interaction with the world, you are focused on thought.”

These three readings point out why your thoughts show you a meaningless world. You do not look directly at the world as it is now. If you did, you would see with true perception. Instead, you interpret everything you see and experience through self-referencing thoughts, which are centered on a self that isn’t you.

In other words, the foundation for everything you see, in the way that you see it, and for everything you experience, in the way that you experience it, is a mistake.

Since the foundation for the way you interpret the world is a mistake—it’s based on a you that you aren’t—everything you see and everything you experience is misperceived. Your meaningless thoughts show you a meaningless world.

Regina’s Tip for Lesson 12

 Today’s workbook lesson begins by saying:

“The importance of this idea lies in the fact that it contains a correction for a major perceptual distortion.”

The major perceptual distortion is the idea that you are the person you think you are.

Today’s lesson asks you to look about yourself and say, “I see a ___________ world,” and fill in the blank with whatever descriptive terms happen to occur to you, regardless of whether the terms are positive or negative.

Have you ever considered what causes you to see something as positive or negative?

Self-referencing is what leads you to see something as positive or negative. For example, if you are a city dweller who works in an office all week and looks forward to Saturday in the park, you may see rain on Saturday as disappointing or depressing. If you are a farmer who raises vegetables in the dry climate of eastern Colorado, you are probably happy to see rain whenever it occurs.

Rain is just rain. It isn’t positive or negative. However, rain is perceived as positive or negative by self-referencing thoughts.

Today’s lesson says, “I am upset because I see a meaningless world.”

We could also say, “I am upset because I reference the world to a self, thinking I am that self, when I am not.”

Regina’s Tip for Lesson 13

Today’s lesson says that we are afraid of meaninglessness. It says, “The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own ideas” in the “empty space that meaninglessness provides,” because the ego is “fearful that the void may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own impo­tence and unreality.”

In other words, the false idea about who you are is held up and maintained by the meaning your thoughts give to everything you see and experience. There’s a fear this false idea about who you are will collapse, and you will no longer see yourself as the person you think you are.

To realize this for yourself, consider doing this extra exercise today:

1. Write down some opinions you’ve noticed yourself feeling passionate about recently. They could be political opinions, opinions about current events, religious opinions or opinions about the people and situations in your life. They may include opinions about what’s right and wrong or what should be done and what should not be done. The only criterion that is important is that you feel passionate about the opinion.
2. Look at each of the opinions you’ve written down on the list. As you look at each opinion, say, “This idea is meaningless. It has no meaning and no value at all. I can let this thought go completely, and never bring it up again.” Notice how you feel as you say this. You may feel differently with some items on the list than you do with others. Write down what you feel next to each opinion on the list.

After you finish this exercise, look carefully at what you felt as you practiced the exercise. Was it always easy to say, “I can let this thought go completely and never bring it up again,” or did you experience resistance to the idea of letting go of some of your opinions?

Resistance is fear. The resistance you experienced as you thought about letting go of some of your opinions isthe ego’s fear that “the void,” which is the space that is left when the false self’s meaning is taken away, may demonstrate “its own impotence and unreality.”

Your opinions are a means for maintaining the ego. The resistance you feel when you think about letting them go is an ego preservation strategy. That’s why today’s lesson says:

“It is essential, therefore, that you learn to recognize the mean­ingless, and accept it without fear.

It is essential to realizing your true Self, because in order to realize truth, you must let go of the meaning that supports and maintains the false.

Regina’s Tip for Lesson 14

Yesterday’s workbook lesson said:

“Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God and the ego ‘challenge’ each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space that meaninglessness provides.”

That paragraph makes a useful point, but it isn’t wholly true. You aren’t actually separated from God—separation is an illusion—so it isn’t correct to refer to you as a separated one. Also, God does not object to the ego’s way of seeing—God allows it—so God does not challenge the ego. However, as we saw yesterday, it is true that the ego feels threatened by meaninglessness, because the false self maintains its identity and its seeming reality by giving value to thought.

It is also true that as long as the ego’s meaning is believed, God’s reality is hidden. In order to see the world as God created it, the ego’s meaning must be thoroughly denied.

That brings us to today’s workbook lesson:

God did not create a meaningless world.

When you deny the world’s horrors as you practice today’s workbook lesson, it might be helpful to realize you aren’t denying that ‘horrors’ are experienced in the world, because they are. You are denying that they are reality.

There’s a difference between experience (or appearance) and reality. For example, you experience your nighttime dreams, but they aren’t reality.

Spiritual awakening is recognizing the difference between experience and reality in a deeply meaningful and abiding way.

As you do today’s practice, give willingness to see through the experience of the world to reality. Be curious to know, “What is real?” Be willing for that curiosity to grow in you until it becomes a force that is so motivating, it drives you to drop the ego fantasy and realize truth.