My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.

1-8-2024

I just had two days of classes for seminary. My classmates are beginning to share stories of their lives. I came away from this weekend realizing that based on how people look, my thoughts use my past experience to categorize everyone into a frame that I am familiar with. This system my thoughts use is a failure – not one person who shared anything about themselves was in anyway how I thought they were.

“I only see the past in that face.” (L7)

I wrote a couple of poems last week that led me to understand that humility is a ‘superpower’, and that ‘I don’t know’ is a blessing. I spent most of December with inner turmoil because of a lack of confidence in speaking with others. My poems helped me to embrace a change and see the gift of humility and not knowing.

The courage of my classmates to show their true selves was confirming for me that my past method of judging people does not work.

“I only see the past in that face.”

1-8-2023

“Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is.”

The first paragraph of the lesson took some consideration to understand. We’re told, we’re not having actual thoughts if the mind is in the past or future. OK … the Course is using a different definition of ‘thinking’ that means using the mind only in the present moment.

My thoughts go to experiencing something in the present moment, perhaps I drop my mug of tea on the floor. I would see it now, but my mind would go to the clean up (future), or feeling regret if the mug had sentimental value (past). I cannot see how to avoid past thoughts. There must be more.

“Recognizing that your mind is blank is the first step to opening the way to vision.”

What would Jesus do?

The presence of Love would be there …

There would be kindness and support for others involved. The knowing to act on cleaning up would be there and done with presence (thinking of Thich Nhat Hahn). Or, I had the thought of Jesus sharing a fun memory to bring joy to the situation.

I’m now thinking about Hollie’s video yesterday in which she said just do the lesson, and don’t take it too far. But my mind is preoccupied with past thoughts … of the Love that flows to me from doing these lessons.

I’ll leave it now. _/\_