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A COURSE IN MIRACLES

THOUGHTS

From very early on in The Course in Miracles, we are given the truth that our thoughts create our reality. That is why it is so important to choose our thoughts wisely. If we do not consider our life to be all that we would like it to be, it can only be because "You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, and are passively condoning your mind's miscreations." Here are some of the key phrases about thoughts from the Course:

Lessons containing the word Thought:

• LESSON 4. These thoughts do not mean anything. They are like the things I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place].
• LESSON 8. My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts. (No one really sees anything. He sees only his thoughts projected outward....While thoughtless ideas preoccupy your mind, the truth is blocked....The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here.)
• LESSON 10. My thoughts do not mean anything.
• LESSON 11. My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.
• LESSON 15. My thoughts are images that I have made. (It is because the thoughts you think you think appear as images that you do not recognize them as nothing.)
• LESSON 16. I have no neutral thoughts. (Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact. ... There is no more self-contradictory concept than that of "idle thoughts." What gives rise to the perception of a whole world can hardly be called idle....Besides your recognizing that thoughts are never idle, salvation requires that you also recognize that every thought you have brings either peace or war; either love or fear.)
• LESSON 19. I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.
• LESSON 23. I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts. (Every thought you have makes up some segment of the world you see. It is with your thoughts, then, that we must work, if your perception of the world is to be changed... Practice with today's idea will help you to understand that vulnerability or invulnerability is the result of your own thoughts. Nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so.)
• LESSON 26. My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability. (Attack thoughts and invulnerability cannot be accepted together. They contradict each other.)
• LESSON 221. Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still.
• LESSON 281. I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts.
• LESSON 284. I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.
• LESSON 338. I am affected only by my thoughts.

Concepts regarding thought from the Text:

• T-1.I.12. Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual.
• T-2.VI.9.There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level.
• T-2.VII.1. It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully enough. You may feel that at this point it would take a miracle to enable you to do this, which is perfectly true. You are not used to miracle-minded thinking, but you can be trained to think that way. All miracle workers need that kind of training.
• T-2.VII.3. Both miracles and fear come from thoughts.
• T-5.I.2. Let us start our process of reawakening with just a few simple concepts: Thoughts increase by being given away. The more who believe in them the stronger they become. Everything is an idea. How, then, can giving and losing be associated?
• T-7.VII.1. You will never be able to exclude yourself from your thoughts.
• T-12.III.7. thoughts do have consequences to the thinker.
• T-14.I.3. Seeing is always outward. Were your thoughts wholly of you, the thought system you made would be forever dark. The thoughts the mind of God's Son projects or extends have all the power that he gives to them. The thoughts he shares with God are beyond his belief, but those he made are his beliefs. And it is these, and not the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love. They will not be taken from him. But they can be given up by him, for the Source of their undoing is in him. There is nothing in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane and leads to nothing. Yet in him who made this insane logic there is One Who knows it leads to nothing, for He knows everything.
• T-14.111.1. The guiltless learner learns easily because his thoughts are free.