Lesson 8 – My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
In Chapter 13 of A Course in Miracles, we are told, “Time seems to go in one direction, but when you reach its end it will roll up like a long carpet spread along the past behind you, and will disappear.”
The ego mind is fixated on an imaginary story based in the concept of time and space. The ACIM Workbook practice is undoing this fixation. As we look out towards the horizon, so to speak, instead of down at the ground, a vast new view reveals itself.
We accomplish this by mentally choosing Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, as our guide and teacher. It is greatly comforting to realize that we are not alone — Jesus, all of Christ Mind and the Holy Spirit are our holy companions.
Chapter 13 says, “As you perceive the holy companions who travel with you, you will realize that there is no journey, but only an awakening.”
Lesson 8 begins to train our mind to recognize when it is not thinking at all. What the ego calls “thinking” is actually blankness — virtual reality via the five senses.
Chapter 21 tells us, “The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. … It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition.”
“My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts” makes more sense as I gain awareness that eyesight produces imaginary pictures and what I see is just an ego game of make-believe. Intellectual understanding is useful, but without practical application, we remain stuck in our heads.
Try the exercises for yourself and see what happens. And make sure to pay attention to how Jesus structures the sentences with the word “seem” — facilitates powerful shifts in perception.