My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.I
1. This idea is, of course, the reason why you only see the past.
²In truth, no one sees anything.
³What you see are only your own thoughts projected outward.II
⁴The fact that your mind is preoccupied with past thoughts is the cause of the completely distorted perception of time from which your seeing suffers.
⁵Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is.III
⁶That is why it cannot understand time, and that is why, in fact, it cannot understand anything.IV
2. The only completely true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. ²Therefore, thinking about the past is always thinking about illusions.V
³Very few minds have realized what it truly means to picture the past or anticipate the future.VI
⁴In fact, the mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything.
3. The purpose of today’s exercises is to begin training your mind to recognize when it is not really thinking at all.
²If your mind is engaged in meaningless ideas, it is blocked to the truth. ³The first step in opening the way to Vision is to recognize that your mind has simply been blank, rather than believing it is filled with real ideas.VII
4. Today’s exercises should be done with eyes closed.
²This is because you really cannot see anything, and it is easier to recognize that, no matter how vividly you may picture a thought, you are not seeing anything.VIII
³Search your mind casually for about a minute, simply noting the thoughts you find there.
⁴Identify each of them by the central figure or theme it contains, and then move on to the next.
⁵Begin the practice by saying:
⁶It seems that I am thinking about ____.
⁷Then name each of your thoughts specifically.
⁸For example:
⁹It seems that I am thinking about…
… the name of a person,
… the name of an object,
… the name of an event,
… the name of an emotion,
… or whatever it may be.
¹⁰Conclude the mind-search with:
¹¹But my mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
5. This can be done four or five times today, unless you notice it causes irritation.
²If you find it uncomfortable, three or four times will suffice. ³Even so, it may be helpful to include your own irritation in the mind-search, or any other emotion the idea for today may provoke.
I Ordinarily, our mind is not thinking at all; it is merely absorbed in gazing at images of the past projected onto a blank screen. They are empty illusions (3:2), because “these thoughts do not mean anything” (Lesson 4). The mind is in a state of stupefaction, absorbed in contemplating the story that arises from an uncontrollable inner dialogue: the ego’s narrative, built around fears, desires, and lacks, vindicating the ego’s idea of itself, always tainted with specialness and grandiosity. You call this “thinking,” when in truth it is nothing more than witnessing the ego’s madness and claiming it as your own.
The mind is addicted to the stories it tells itself because, as seen in the Text, it feels guilty for having separated from God and is afraid to look within and find the “sin” of having attacked God by stealing an exclusive identity. That is why it always looks outside itself for the love, peace, and security it believes it has lost.
In reality, since there is nothing outside itself, the mind projects an imaginary space, fills it with symbols of its fears and desires, and calls it “world.” This “reality” it now perceives is false, and thus it must sustain it with an incessant inner dialogue meant to prove its veracity and keep it from recognizing its true identity.
II The mind is abstract, and as such it relates only to abstract things—that is, to ideas. What happens is that the mind calls some of those ideas “things,” simply because the content of the idea is to be a “concrete thing.” In this way, the mind deceives itself twice.
The first time is when it conceives and projects an idea without recognizing that this is what it has done. The second is when it confuses that idea with its content, and so it believes it is relating to something material and external to itself. This is the same mechanism that makes nighttime dreams seem to be real events while we sleep. The world the mind thinks it knows does not exist outside the mind that conceives it; ideas do not leave their source. This is the basis of forgiveness: the reason we forgive is simply that what we believe we see outside is not real, it does not exist.
III To behold the present as it truly is, this Course calls experiencing the “holy instant”—a timeless moment of happiness in which one experiences great peace, deep love, and perfect awareness of one’s innocence, as well as that of all one perceives.
IV Anchored in the apparent reality of space and time, the egoic mind cannot understand anything; it merely dreams its own projections of desires and fears.
V This is an obvious truth that is usually overlooked: the only thing present in the mind when it is absorbed in past thoughts is a distorted memory of what is believed to have happened. Thus the present has been turned into the memory of a fictitious story you tell yourself. Meanwhile, you waste a flawless, immaculate present that slips away as you devote your mind to recalling a past that no longer exists.
The questions you must ask yourself are: Is that not an excessive price to pay for an irrelevant gratification in fantasies? What is the return on such an investment? Has it ever brought you any real benefit? Are you aware of what you are missing by doing this?
It is of the utmost importance to realize that all memories appear in your mind in the present entirely voluntarily—that is, because you want to bring them there. The reason for this addiction to recalling past events, especially the most painful ones, is explained in the section “The Obstacles to Peace” (T-19.IV).
Nothing from the past can torment you in the present unless you evoke it and grant it that power. To acknowledge this requires great honesty, but the reward is immense, for it places you—and you alone—as responsible for your emotions and also for your release.
VI To visualize the past or foresee the future is to “imagine”—that is, to project and contemplate images on the screen of consciousness. It is to occupy the mind with a sterile activity whose sole purpose is to satisfy the demands of the ego.
The script of the “movie” the ego projects in your mind is predictable; in fact, it follows the same patterns as commercial films, where a hero—the ego—embarks on adventures that simultaneously vindicate its sense of grandiosity and its vulnerability.
The false idea you held of yourself in the past—your ego—felt offended because something occurred that thwarted its expectations, and now you recall those events in the present to torture yourself and compensate for those offenses by avenging yourself in fantasies.
VII That is to say, your goal today is simply to “become aware” of what is occurring in your holy mind throughout most of the day. It is not a matter of changing anything now; it is only a matter of becoming conscious of what is taking place. You cannot, by yourself, bring about the changes your mind needs to abandon that hypnotic state.
VIII You are not seeing anything “real”; you are merely gazing at an illusion of reality, a kind of movie.