Together, We Light the Way

Lesson 25

I do not know what anything is for.
1. Purpose is meaning. ²Today’s idea explains why nothing you see means anything. ³You do not know what it is for. ⁴Therefore, it is meaningless to you. ⁵Everything is for your own best interests. ⁶That is what it is for; that is its purpose; that is what it means. ⁷It is in recognizing this that your goals become unified. ⁸It is in recognizing this that what you see is given meaning.
2. You perceive the world and everything in it as meaningful in terms of ego goals. ²These goals have nothing to do with your own best interests, because the ego is not you. ³This false identification makes you incapable of understanding what anything is for. ⁴As a result, you are bound to misuse it. ⁵When you believe this, you will try to withdraw the goals you have assigned to the world, instead of attempting to reinforce them.
3. Another way of describing the goals you now perceive is to say that they are all concerned with “personal” interests. ²Since you have no personal interests, your goals are really concerned with nothing. ³In cherishing them, therefore, you have no goals at all. ⁴And thus you do not know what anything is for.
4. Before you can make any sense out of the exercises for today, one more thought is necessary. ²At the most superficial levels, you do recognize purpose. ³Yet purpose cannot be understood at these levels. ⁴For example, you do understand that a telephone is for the purpose of talking to someone who is not physically in your immediate vicinity. ⁵What you do not understand is what you want to reach him for. ⁶And it is this that makes your contact with him meaningful or not.
5. It is crucial to your learning to be willing to give up the goals you have established for everything. ²The recognition that they are meaningless, rather than “good” or “bad,” is the only way to accomplish this. ³The idea for today is a step in this direction.
6. Six practice periods, each of two-minutes duration, are required. ²Each practice period should begin with a slow repetition of the idea for today, followed by looking about you and letting your glance rest on whatever happens to catch your eye, near or far, “important” or “unimportant,” “human” or “nonhuman.” ³With your eyes resting on each subject you so select, say, for example:
⁴I do not know what this chair is for.
⁵I do not know what this pencil is for.
⁶I do not know what this hand is for.
⁷Say this quite slowly, without shifting your eyes from the subject until you have completed the statement about it. ⁸Then move on to the next subject, and apply today’s idea as before.
(ACIM, W-25.1:1–6:8)

2025
At first glance, this seems not to be true. As I look around the room, applying today’s lessons to various things, it certainly seems like it is obvious what these things are for. But when I take into consideration the fact that I identify with the ego, I see that I judge their purpose according to how it affects the personal self. Since the personal self is an illusion, and I am not, I see this is why I do not know what anything is for.
I had a perfect example of this as soon as I got out of bed. I went into my bathroom and turned on the light and the heater. I dislike the abrupt temperature change from the warm bed to the cold bathroom, so I appreciate this heater very much. This morning, it made an awful noise before the fan got going. I expressed my dismay forcefully. Let’s just say that I said “darn it!” Or something stronger. LOL.
I certainly felt like I knew what that heater was for. But who is it that thinks she needs a heater? It is the ego, the separate self, that is represented by a body. It is the ego, the separate self that has opinions and preferences that may be different than other body-selves.
As long as I continue to reference everything back to a separate self, I will continue to be lost in the world of thought projected outward. I don’t want that. I want to awaken from the imagined world, not reinforce it. So, I am ready for today’s simple lesson. I might have been lukewarm about doing it, but now I am actually excited about it. This lesson, practiced until it is fully accepted, is essential to awakening. That is what it is for.

2026
After reading what I wrote last year, I wasn’t sure I had anything to add. But I would add that if the bathroom heater stopped working, I would, of course, replace it. Understanding that I don’t know what something is for and so don’t know what it means doesn’t necessarily affect how I use it or if I use it. That’s not what this lesson is teaching. But noticing this misunderstanding of purpose frequently will help me shift my belief in a separate self. We all know who we are, but that knowledge is buried behind the false identity we took to have this experience. Remembering who we are and learning to identify as Self is our true purpose.
What makes this lesson uncomfortable is not that I lack information, but that I am asked to relinquish authority. I am not being invited to replace ego meanings with better ones, but to admit I have never known what anything was for. In that admission, meaning is no longer my responsibility—and that is a great relief.
Once purpose is no longer personal, the separate self has no function left to perform. And without function, it gently fades.
Video: https://youtu.be/O5aLTwpZRzM

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