A Course in Miracles Workbook Daily Lesson 284, Year 2022

ACIM Daily Lesson 284 I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt. 1. Loss is not loss when properly perceived.

Lesson 284

I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.

1. Loss is not loss when properly perceived. ²Pain is impossible. ³There is no grief with any cause at all. ⁴And suffering of any kind is nothing but a dream. ⁵This is the truth, at first to be but said and then repeated many times; and next to be accepted as but partly true, with many reservations. ⁶Then to be considered seriously more and more, and finally accepted as the truth. ⁷I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt. ⁸And I would go beyond these words today, and past all reservations, and arrive at full acceptance of the truth in them.

2. Father, what You have given cannot hurt, so grief and pain must be impossible. ²Let me not fail to trust in You today, accepting but the joyous as Your gifts; accepting but the joyous as the truth.

Only our thoughts hurt us.

We can believe ideas and those ideas become true for us. This is what has happened to us, why it is that we think we are separate from God, living in a world as bodies. If we continue to believe in this fantasy, we will suffer from our thoughts. We will continue to believe in pain because we believe that we are bodies and that bodies experience pain. We believe we are separate and alone, and loneliness is painful. Bodies die, and we are left without the body we loved, so we grieve our loss.

There is a way out of the world.

And we do want out even as we resist the simple process that we are given to free us. We can decide to change our minds about what we believe. We can change all thoughts that hurt. Because our thoughts are projected outward and seen by the body’s eyes, we think our thoughts must be true and real. This is the error that makes the world possible. It is the error that keeps us coming back for more suffering. But the world is not cause, our thoughts are cause, and they can change.

We know that we can change our minds. We do it all the time. For instance, I go for an ice cream cone intending to get Vanilla. Once there, I choose Rocky Road instead because I changed my mind. I get married and then divorced because I changed my mind. It is easy to see that I believed one thing, and then I believed something else instead. It didn’t just happen, I decided. I chose to believe that I am a body living in a world of time and space. I believed that a certain amount of pain and loss was inevitable. And I thought there was no way out. Now I have changed my mind.

Jesus has helped me to see this differently.

He has convinced me to look deeper into myself and to find the truth. I still waver in the face of what my past beliefs have shown me. However, I can never go back to believing in the world completely. My process is described here exactly. ⁵This is the truth, at first to be but said and then repeated many times; and next to be accepted as but partly true, with many reservations. ⁶Then to be considered seriously more and more, and finally accepted as the truth.

I have one problem. I think I am no longer in God. My problem is that I think I am different, that I am not what God created. This means that I believe I changed creation. Everything else stems from that one thought that I decided to believe. All the pain I have ever suffered was because I believed this thought. All the loss I ever felt was because I believed this thought. This thought of separation from God is not true, and I can elect to change my mind about the belief it is true.

Most of the time I feel detached from the body and the world.

But then something here pulls me back into the old beliefs. My child is sick, or someone I love dies. This body feels pain, or I forget something important. I feel a stab of fear that this brain is failing me. There is a hurricane warning, and I feel tired at the thought of going through all that again. Some lingering belief in the world’s reality rises to the surface and grabs my attention. It’s OK, though, because while part of the mind is interested in these phenomena, I know that they are not true.

No matter what appears on the screen of my mind, I have one overriding desire. ⁸And I would go beyond these words today, and past all reservations, and arrive at full acceptance of the truth in them. I am meant for joy, not pain, and I pray that today I choose to believe only that which brings joy. I pray for support as I continue to make the choice for God over and over until I accept nothing else.

This morning I was insane.

I woke up with my mind on a simple task to complete, but it is one that I haven’t done before. It loomed before me like a rocky landscape filled with pitfalls and dangers of all kinds. Which is insane. I had no idea if this was going to be difficult. But once I stepped into the ego mind, I lost all sense of reality. Well, not all sense. I had lost my peace, and the peace of God is always my only goal, so I knew what to do.

I looked at the chaos in my mind and grabbed the first untrue thought that I recognized as causing me distress. It was projection. I was projecting blame for my upset on everyone involved, which was just plain silly. That realization helped me regain my footing. Then I was able to see other thoughts, such as thoughts of distrust. In examining these thoughts, I realized that they were unfounded, just me dragging the past into the future without even slowing down at the present.

So, I let myself linger for a while in the present moment, where it turns out nothing was happening, just a lot of thoughts. I turned to Jesus with an open mind knowing he would guide me. I thought he would guide me in knowing what to do in this unfamiliar territory so that I could deal with it more easily. But instead, he led me to a Facebook post describing someone else’s miracle.

Jesus, you are a genius! Thank you.

Reading about how she found her answer as she told Jesus she was willing and then letting him lead her to the root cause was just what I needed to hear. He led me to another post that further encouraged me, as it was about acknowledging the miracle. My mind is now clear, and I hear Jesus reminding me to listen to a talk by Kevin Kavanagh that I had been putting off, so that is next on my agenda. Jesus answers us in many ways according to what we will be open to hearing. What we can depend on is that he will answer. Being open to hearing is our part. Being willing to follow his guidance is our part.

Jesus then did something that made me laugh.

He led me to my own writing. Once an article I write is published, I often read it. Mostly I do this because by the time it is published, I have forgotten what I wrote. I read a recent article I wrote for Pathways of Light quarterly magazine. In this article, I was exploring what it is that I want more than the peace of God. I discovered that thoughts of wanting something in the world took me out of peace. Here is part of that article.

I Was in Peace Until…

I passed a mirror and thought I just had to lose some weight. Just like that, I was no longer at peace. Many others followed that thought. I wondered what to do about my body and what it means that I am having so much trouble losing weight. I started thinking about what I ate that day that I shouldn’t have. At that moment in which, I decided that I need to lose weight to be happy, I lost my peace. Or that my body identity, the image I present to the world and that I think of as me, became what is important to me. I was no longer at peace. 

And another time…

I was at peace until I wished my son would call me or that I could visit him. Then I felt sad and lonely, and my mind thought up a special relationship story about this and was off and running. I had been happy and at peace, and I had a simple thought of missing my son. I didn’t think how much I love my son, which would not have disturbed my peace and would have, in fact, brought me more joy. Instead, I thought he should be here with me, that I would be happier if he were here. I wanted the world to be different so that I could be happy, and in that thought, I was no longer at peace. 

So, this Is what I did. 

I saw that when these stray thoughts came into my mind and I found myself wanting something besides peace, I immediately lost that wonderful, joyful peace. I reminded myself that the peace of God is everything I want. So, I asked the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of the belief that anything else can make me happy. I didn’t try to stop missing my son. Instead, I asked for healing and began to anticipate that healing. I am watching my mind and my feelings to see what it is like to feel only love for him and no need at all. 

I didn’t try to stop caring about how I looked. Instead, I started watching for a change, not knowing what that would look like. Assuming it will be a change that does not leave me feeling guilty and afraid. In fact, I anticipated feeling free! How that occurred or what it looked like was not my business. My desire for this healing is my part, the rest is for the Holy Spirit, and He does not need my help. 

Pain is impossible.

This one is harder to accept. I understand that emotional pain is impossible unless I think it into existence, and even then, it is not real, just a bad decision. I can always choose again now though sometimes it takes me a while to do so. Physical pain is more difficult for me. I can see it is not really different since pain is just a thought in my mind, but that doesn’t always translate into something useful for me.

I have watched pain disappear as I refused to acknowledge it as real, and other times, I have tried and failed to succeed. What I do know is that this has nothing to do with the pain itself but is a failure to communicate. I have failed to hear the Voice for God and have failed to allow that Voice to communicate the truth through me. I continue to practice this truth, though. When I have physical pain, I ask myself what this is, and I answer with conviction, “This is nothing!” Sometimes I allow that to penetrate, and the pain disappears. Sometimes, not.

The dream is a dream, and I am safe while I dream because I am not the dream but the dreamer. To the degree I can detach from the dream, I do not suffer. Something happens in the dream, and I experience it and let it go. It washes over me in its passage, and so I feel it. But knowing it is not real and that I am real, I don’t hold onto it with my thoughts about it.

I had pain in my neck last night.

I tried to remember that it was nothing, just a dream of pain, but it continued and got worse, so I took something for it even as I acknowledged its unreality. Thus, I got a dose of muscle relaxants for my neck and a dose of truth for my mind. That done, I took my attention away from the phantom pain. It doesn’t help anything to focus on thoughts that are hurting me.

I think that one day, because of this consistent practice and because of other practices that bring me closer to knowing my Self, I will simply remember the truth and that I have no further use for pain, and it will disappear. Because as Jesus has told us, forgive, and this will disappear. So, I forgive the idea of pain, and it disappears.

I have seen it happen many times now, just not consistently. I think it is inconsistent because fear of pain keeps me from letting it go. Since I keep thinking about it, it continues to exist for me. Maybe I will finally let it go, maybe not. Either way, what I am cannot experience pain and what I am is the only reality.

Regina’s Tips

As The Teachings of Inner Ramana says, “This is as simple as living from within instead of from without.”

If we look at the world as a movie or a play, we can also say that it has two directors. One director is the ego. When the actor is too caught up in the play of the world, the ego shouts its directions, and the actor blindly follows. This actor has forgotten that the play is a play and believes s/he is affected by everything that is happening.

The other director is intuition. In order to hear this quieter director, who whispers instructions quietly from within the actor, the actor must remember that s/he wants to hear the director’s instructions. To do this, the actor must be more focused within than on the play. Certainly, there is awareness of the play, but the actor is turned inward to discover what s/he is to say, do, not say or not do as the script of the play unfolds.

The thoughts that hurt come from the ego. They are thoughts that rise up from the belief that we are affected by the world.

In order to change all thoughts that hurt, we must change directions and directors. Instead of being focused outward, we change direction and focus inward, always inward.

Outward results in fear and suffering.
Inward realizes wisdom, peace and trust.

My Thoughts

I do believe this world is an illusion, a thought form that exists only in my mind. And yet, I can still get caught up in the story and the emotions the story elicits, and then it can be hard to remember the truth, though not often and never for long. I depend on these lessons, and the courses I give, and in giving take for myself, and on meditations and processes and whatever it is that helps me to stay centered and anchored in the truth. All of these things direct me inward to my Thought Director, the Holy Spirit. I might get caught up in the emotions, but I never stay in the thought process that has me looking outward for a solution.

Contemplation 2025

To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 284 click here.

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