¹ A theoretical foundation such as the text is necessary as a background to make these exercises meaningful. Yet it is the exercises which will make the goal possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth.

¹ In no situation which arises do you realize the outcome that would make you happy. Therefore you have no guide to appropriate action, and no way of judging the results. What you do is determined by your perception of the situation, and that perception is wrong. It is inevitable, then, that you will not serve your own best interests. Yet they are your only goal in any situation which is correctly perceived. Otherwise, you will not recognize what they are.

² If you realized that you do not perceive your own best interests, you could be taught what they are. But in the presence of your conviction that you do know what they are, you cannot learn. The idea for today is a step toward opening your mind so that learning can begin.

³ The exercises for today require much more honesty than you are accustomed to using. A few subjects, honestly and carefully considered in each of the five practice periods which should be undertaken today, will be more helpful than a more cursory examination of a large number. Two minutes are suggested for each of the mind searching periods which the exercises involve.

⁴ The practice periods begin with repeating today's idea, followed by searching the mind with closed eyes for unresolved situations about which you are currently concerned. The emphasis should be on uncovering the outcome you want. You will quickly realize that you have a number of goals in mind as part of the desired outcome and also that these goals are on different levels and often conflict.

⁵ Name each situation that occurs to you, and enumerate carefully as many goals as possible that you would like to be met in its resolution. The form of each application should be roughly as follows:

⁶ In the situation involving _____, I would like _____ to happen, and _____ to happen,

⁷ and so on. Try to cover as many different kinds of outcome as may honestly occur to you, even if some of them do not appear to you to be directly related to the situation or even to be inherent in it at all.

⁸ If these exercises are done properly, you will quickly recognize that you are making a large number of demands of the situation which have nothing to do with it. You will also recognize that many of your goals are contradictory, that you have no unified outcome in mind, and that you must experience disappointment in connection with some of your goals however the situation turns out.

⁹ After covering the list of as many hoped-for goals as possible for each unresolved situation that crosses your mind, say to yourself:

¹⁰ I do not perceive my own best interests in this situation,

¹¹ and go on to the next.

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⁸² The first corrective step is know first that this is an expression of fear. Then say to yourself that you must somehow have willed not to love, or the fear which arises from behavior-will conflict could not have arisen.Then the whole process is nothing more than a series of pragmatic steps in the larger process of accepting the Atonement as the remedy. These steps can be summarized as follows:

⁸³ 1. Know first that this is fear.

⁸⁴ 2. Fear arises from lack of love.

⁸⁵ 3. The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love.

⁸⁶ 4. Perfect love is the Atonement.

⁸⁷ We have emphasized that the miracle, or the expression of Atonement, is always a sign of real respect from the worthy to the worthy. This worth is re-established by the Atonement. It is obvious then that when you are afraid, you have placed yourself in a position where you need Atonement because you have done something loveless, having willed without love. This is precisely the situation for which the Atonement was offered. The need for the remedy inspired its creation. As long as you recognize only the need for the remedy, you will remain fearful. However, as soon as you remedy it, you have also abolished the fear. This is how true healing occurs.

⁸⁸ Everyone experiences fear, and no one enjoys it. Yet it would take very little right-thinking to realize why fear occurs. Very few people appreciate the real power of the mind, and no one remains fully aware of it all the time. However, if anyone hopes to spare himself from fear, there are some things he must realize and realize fully. The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating and always as you will. Many of your ordinary expressions reflect this. For example, when you say, "Don't give it a thought," you imply that if you do not think about something, it will have no effect on you. And this is true enough.

⁸⁹ On the other hand, many other expressions clearly illustrate the prevailing lack of awareness of thought-power. For example, you say, "Just an idle thought," and mean that the thought has no effect. You also speak of some actions as "thoughtless," implying that if the person had thought, he would not behave as he did. While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it because you do not really think that you will.

⁹⁰ It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power surge that can literally move mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you do not believe it. People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally afraid of them. Many psychotherapists attempt to help people who are afraid, say, of their death wishes by depreciating the power of the wish. They even try to "free" the patient by persuading him that he can think whatever he wants without any real effect at all.

⁹¹ There is a real dilemma here which only the truly right-minded can escape. Death wishes do not kill in the physical sense, but they do kill spiritual awareness. All destructive thinking is dangerous. Given a death wish, a man has no choice except to act upon the thought or behave contrary to it. He thus chooses only between homicide and fear. The other possibility is that he depreciates the power of his thought. This is the usual psychoanalytic approach. It does allay guilt but at the cost of rendering thinking impotent. If you believe that what you think is ineffectual you may cease to be overly afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it.

⁹² The world is full of examples of how man has depreciated himself because he is afraid of his own thoughts. In some forms of insanity, thoughts are glorified, but this is only because the underlying depreciation was too effective for tolerance. The truth is that there are no "idle" thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level. The reason people are afraid of ESP and so often react against it is because they know that thoughts can hurt them. Their own thoughts have made them vulnerable.

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