Journal for Day 11
LESSON 11
My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.
It seems like I see something in the world and what I see is what there is to see. But actually, it is my thoughts that determine the world I see. And I have already determined that my thoughts don’t mean anything because they are not my real thoughts. This week, I have seen the ego in action, filling my mind with its interpretation of the world.
I have a brother who is doing time in Angola. I speak to him on the phone once a week and I email him, too. Sometimes I buy things for him and send money to make his time a little easier. What he really wants is for me to visit him and I did do that once when he was at a smaller facility. It was perfectly awful.
The only thing that kept my younger days from being any wilder was the fear of going to jail. I have a sickening dread of prisons. When I was working, I could have made a lot of money selling to the prison system. I made one visit to a prison to talk to the purchasing agent and when I heard that door clang shut behind me, I knew I would never be back. Maybe I was incarcerated in another life, but something, some long past memory is influencing me in this lifetime.
James really wants me to visit again. He made arrangements through another inmate’s family to pick me up and bring me to the prison when next they came to see their loved one. I agreed because I just couldn’t say no. Friday is the day. I have been watching the thoughts in my mind about this visit. Well, part of me is watching, the other part is involved with those thoughts. I have been using the lessons to help with my distress.
My thoughts go like this:
It is a three hour drive there and three hours back. That’s a lot even with someone else driving. I know I used to drive all the time, an average of 50,000 miles a year, actually. But it was beginning to take a toll on me before I retired and now it is a lot harder for me.
We are leaving at 4 AM. Seriously?
I don’t know these people at all and I am truly uncomfortable with small talk especially when we have nothing in common other than family in prison.
I am going to have to go into a major prison and one with a harsh reputation. This fear won’t make sense to anyone else, but it is real to me.
They plan to stay all day long. I love my brother but sometimes we run out of things to talk about in our 15 minute calls.
I know prison has changed him and I dread to see the outward signs.
After what could be a long day and an emotional strain, I am going to ride back for those 3 hours with people I still don’t know.
All of the above thoughts are meaningless and they are showing me a meaningless world. Other than I will be riding for three hours with people I don’t yet know to see my brother in prison, there is nothing that I have thought about the trip that is necessarily true. Every other thought is the result of using the ego-thinking mind to decide what this situation means.
These ego thoughts don’t mean anything because they are not my real thoughts. They will, however, determine my day if I don’t release them. I don’t want these thoughts to determine the world I see when Friday rolls around. I don’t know what anything means and I will not use what I have learned in the past to teach myself what it means now. My only real problem is my thoughts, and I don’t have to keep thoughts I don’t want.
At least I can decide I do not like what I feel now. And so I hope I have been wrong. I want another way to look at this. Perhaps there is another way to look at this. What can I lose by asking?
I am willing to see this differently. These ego thoughts are not making me happy and on that basis alone it is insane to keep them. I give them to the Holy Spirit and ask Him to correct my thinking and heal my mind. Show me another way to see this.
NTI Romans 3
How is it that we got so lost in our “what if it could be true” story? We used judgment. We judged that the story was real and that we were guilty.
“Every option and every judgment that came from this was an option or judgment based on fantasy, and so it resulted in additional layers of fantasy.”
I imagine how deep these layers might be and I realize why it is that we take some time to undo this illusion in our mind. And it is an illusion, pure fantasy. The judgment did not make the fantasy real; it just enlivened it. Every judgment we make adds more layers of fantasy and takes us deeper into the illusion and the resulting guilt.
Since none of this is true and since truth has not left our mind, we can extricate ourselves from this web of deceit. We do this by no longer practicing judgment and guilt. It is really so simple to do, and the only reason that it takes time is that we can hardly believe the whole world we see does not exist outside our mind, and we cannot believe that judgment is the problem, nor do we find it reasonable to believe that we are not guilty.
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