I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me

The Point — Lesson 1 loosened your certainty about what things mean. Lesson 2 brings your own activity into view: the meaning you experience has been given by you. Something appears valuable, threatening, comforting, or insignificant, and you ordinarily experience that significance as belonging to the thing itself. Here Jesus begins turning attention toward the mind that assigned it. The crucial words are “for me.” The exercise exposes your participation in the meaning things hold in your experience. Recognizing that participation opens the possibility of having those meanings corrected.

What’s Undone — The assumption that you passively receive meaning from an already interpreted world. Your judgments seem like reports about things because your contribution has become invisible.

Where It Fits — The movement is precise: first question the meaning you see; then recognize that you supplied it. Lesson 3 will question whether those supplied meanings amount to understanding.

Practice Translation — Applying the idea equally to a body or a button interrupts your usual ranking of significance. Even the importance that makes something seem exempt is part of the meaning being examined.

The Takeaway — I meet things through meanings I have given them.