Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still.
Thought is inherently separative. A thought about the beach is not a thought about the city. A thought about what will happen at work tomorrow is not a thought about what happened yesterday. When we think, we divide, and we name what we divide, and we judge what we have named.
This is not a crisis! It is not a crime against God or nature. Thought is natural in the sense that it is yet another thing that bodies do, like sneezing or peeing or shivering when it’s cold.
It is good to be patient with thought. When we are patient, we see more clearly how it arises in the body – is a function of the body – and so like everything else bodies do is neutral. It is, as the Course points out, simply another aspect of our experience of the physical world (T-2.IV.3:8).
When we understand that thought is neutral, it is easier to let it go. Letting go of our attachment to thought, our investment in thought – which is simply another form of judgment – is what it means to “let our thoughts be still” (W-pII.221.2:6). When we realize they are all the same, then they no longer demand our attention. Just as we sneeze or pee and get on with our lives, so we will think and get on with our lives.
As every meditator knows, there are gaps between thoughts. There are spaces where thought does not go. Mind can become a still pond, a mirror unto the cosmos, and then the cosmos itself. On the one hand, that’s poetic nonsense. But on the other, it points to something true and affirmative about reality.
It is the space – the mindset, the condition – in which our prayer in this lesson is made effective.
Father, I come to You today to seek the peace that You alone can give. I come in silence. In the quiet of my heart, the deep recesses of my mind, I wait and listen for Your Voice (W-pII.221.1:1-3).
To wait in this way is a form of resting. Our confidence that God will speak to us is not a form of expectation, but humility. Anything else presumes that we know what God is and we are not here – praying this way, meditating this way, calling this way – because we know. We are here because we do not know.
But we are sure we will learn.
Therefore, we make the gentle prayer in gratitude and humility, and then sit quietly in patience. Thoughts come and go and we let them. Judgment comes and goes and we let it. When we are answered by God, we know. And if we are not answered, it is okay. We do not wait – nor go unanswered – alone. Our minds are joined – with each other, with the Holy Spirit, and with Jesus (W-pII.221.2:2).
Today, let us wait happily, grateful for such worthy companions, and rest as one in the certainty that Love has not forsaken us.
