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ACIM Lesson 19 2025

I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.

I have been studying and practicing ACIM for over 43 years. I have read these lessons many times. I have done them as Jesus asks, or as close to it as I could, many times. But even so, sometimes, as I contemplate one I can still understand it differently than I did before. Or notice that I overlooked something before.

When reading about private thoughts in the Text, I identified these private thoughts as ego thoughts. And yes, that is true, but this morning, I am seeing it a little differently. The point Jesus makes is that we want to believe that we have a private mind. We want to think that our thoughts belong to us and only us, and that what we think is a secret and has no effects outside our mind.

That is our error; it is not that we have private thoughts because we don’t, but that we believe we do. Our thoughts, all of them, affect all of us because our minds are joined.
The implications of this are enormous. We are in this together, literally. The idea of a world, of bodies, of the pretense of separation, all of it. It was once strange enough to think that what I did could affect people across the world. Nowadays, this is easy to believe. A disease starts in one country and quickly spreads to all countries. But to realize that what I think affects everybody everywhere.

I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing or my thoughts because the only thing remotely real about me is my mind, and it is joined with everyone else’s mind. How on earth did I ever believe that I was not my brother’s keeper? I keep him imprisoned within this ridiculous dream of separation, or I save him from this. And he, me.

© 2025, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

ACIM Lesson 18 2025

I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing.

Our thoughts are projected outward, and our eyes show us these thoughts. Our mind then interprets the thoughts to give meaning to them, which is referred to as our perception of what is happening. Add to that the new fact that our minds are joined, and it is clear that our thoughts are never neutral or unimportant. I learned to watch my thoughts carefully, choosing to keep those that reflected love and release those that reflected fear. As a result, I am far more peaceful than I used to be, and I have put less darkness into the mind we share.

I always assumed that everyone saw objects in the same way. But this isn’t true. I looked at my computer this morning and realized that my history with computers is different than some people’s. I love my computer because it keeps me in touch with other ACIM friends. Otherwise, I would be alone in my study and joining with others has been so very beneficial for me. Others may perceive the computer as a handy tool. I know some who perceive it as the bane of their existence because it causes more problems than solutions for them.

Because I perceive my computer as something I love and appreciate, each time I sit down to it, I settle into a peaceful state and am generally productive in whatever I am doing. I use a Mac, but when I was working, we had PCs. I did not feel the same way about this computer. I perceived the PC to be a problem, and so it was. Apple and Apple users convinced me that this brand was much better, and so it was. Our minds are very powerful.
Our thoughts determine our experience. What happens in our lives is not the sole determiner of our emotional reaction to it. How we perceive what is happening can change everything for us. And although we are not aware of this as it happens, how we experience the world affects others, and how they experience the world affects us because our minds are joined. We will learn more about this later.

© 2025, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

ACIM Lesson 17 2025

I see no neutral things

The point of this exercise and the ones before it is to be sure we understand cause and effect and get the order correct. Thought comes first, always, with no exceptions. From thought comes the illusory world I used to believe in. Now, I sometimes believe in it briefly, and then I go back to remembering that the world is the effect of thought. Also, how I see it, that is, my perception of it, is the effect of my thoughts.

This is a very different way of looking at things. Even noticing that nothing I looked at was neutral was interesting, not having thought about that since I last did this lesson. But the most important thing to remember all the time is that thought came before what I see or experience in the world.

For a while, like many people, I got caught up in politics. I would read about some politician and judge his or her behavior. But here’s the thing. Whether I thought they were wonderful or awful, those judgments came before I saw them in the person.

I wasn’t seeing a politician and deciding who it was. I was looking for guilt or innocence and found what I was looking for. No wonder we are told that we shouldn’t judge. We don’t even admit to ourselves that we decided what we would see before we saw it. Clearly, with such a fundamental error, we don’t know or understand anything.

People want the world to be a better place. In other words, we want other people to do better, so we like our world better. Now that we have cause and effect in the right order, there is only one effective thing we can do. We can look within for the source of the problem and let the Holy Spirit correct our thoughts.

© 2025, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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ACIM Lesson 16 2025

I have no neutral thoughts.

I woke up with anxiety this morning. It was mostly about my children. My daughter had surgery yesterday, and it was rough. My son, who is living with me now, has been deeply depressed. Thoughts about them crowded my mind. Those thoughts were not neutral, and they were creating in their likeness. Yikes! It was like I had not learned anything from the Course.

So, what I did was to review all the lessons up to this one because I knew the answer was there, but the ego thoughts were obscuring it. At first, it wasn’t helping, but I persisted. Soon, I began to smile. It is easy to get caught up in the story that is unfolding and forget the purpose. I can use the story to go more deeply into the illusion or give it to the Holy Spirit to lift me out of the darkness. I chose the Holy Spirit, and He never lets me down.

© 2025, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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ACIM Lesson 15 2025

My thoughts are images that I have made.

This is a favorite lesson. It thrills me to look at what appears to be a solid and real object and realize that it is just an image I wanted to see. The eyes are like virtual reality goggles. They don’t show us what is there. They show us what we want to be there. Sometimes, this is pretty cool stuff. I want coffee to exist, and there it is. That was one of our best ideas. That and chocolate.

But sometimes, I want a place to put my guilt, and those images are not so pleasant. From the perspective of the ego, the eyes serve to convince us the world is real. And because the images seem to be outside our minds, we can believe we have no responsibility for them. Thus, someone or something else is guilty of them.

Used by the Holy Spirit, they show us what it is in our minds that yet needs to be healed. And sometimes, they show us a manifestation of a miracle as the mind is healed. What a blessing that can be.

© 2025, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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