Lesson 190

I choose the joy of God instead of pain.

W-pI.190.1. Pain is a wrong perspective. 2 When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. 3 It is not a fact at all. 4 There is no form it takes that will not disappear if seen aright. 5 For pain proclaims God cruel. 6 How could it be real in any form? 7 It witnesses to God the Father’s hatred of His Son, the sinfulness He sees in him, and His insane desire for revenge and death.

W-pI.190.2. Can such projections be attested to? 2 Can they be anything but wholly false? 3 Pain is but witness to the Son’s mistakes in what he thinks he is. 4 It is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed; for attack on what is wholly unassailable. 5 It is a nightmare of abandonment by an Eternal Love, which could not leave the Son whom It created out of love.

W-pI.190.3. Pain is a sign illusions reign in place of truth. 2 It demonstrates God is denied, confused with fear, perceived as mad, and seen as traitor to Himself. 3 If God is real, there is no pain. 4 If pain is real, there is no God. 5 For vengeance is not part of love. 6 And fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. 7 The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain.

W-pI.190.4. Peace to such foolishness! 2 The time has come to laugh at such insane ideas. 3 There is no need to think of them as savage crimes, or secret sins with weighty consequence. 4 Who but a madman could conceive of them as cause of anything? 5 Their witness, pain, is mad as they, and no more to be feared than the insane illusions which it shields, and tries to demonstrate must still be true.

W-pI.190.5. It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. 2 Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in anyway. 3 There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. 4 No one but yourself affects you. 5 There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. 6 But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. 7 As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. 8 And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness.

W-pI.190.6. My holy brother, think of this awhile: The world you see does nothing. 2 It has no effects at all. 3 It merely represents your thoughts. 4 And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind, and choose the joy of God as what you really want. 5 Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable, forever and forever. 6 And would you deny a little corner of your mind its own inheritance, and keep it as a hospital for pain; a sickly place where living things must come at last to die?

W-pI.190.7. The world may seem to cause you pain. 2 And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. 3 As an effect, it cannot make effects. 4 As an illusion, it is what you wish. 5 Your idle wishes represent its pains. 6 Your strange desires bring it evil dreams. 7 Your thoughts of death envelop it in fear, while in your kind forgiveness does it live.

W-pI.190.8. Pain is the thought of evil taking form, and working havoc in your holy mind. 2 Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free. 3 In pain is God denied the Son He loves. 4 In pain does fear appear to triumph over love, and time replace eternity and Heaven. 5 And the world becomes a cruel and a bitter place, where sorrow rules and little joys give way before the onslaught of the savage pain that waits to end all joy in misery.

W-pI.190.9. Lay down your arms, and come without defense into the quiet place where Heaven’s peace holds all things still at last. 2 Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear. 3 Let no attack enter with you. 4 Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness.

W-pI.190.10. Here will you understand there is no pain. 2 Here does the joy of God belong to you. 3 This is the day when it is given you to realize the lesson that contains all of salvation’s power. 4 It is this: Pain is illusion; joy, reality. 5 Pain is but sleep; joy is awakening. 6 Pain is deception; joy alone is truth.

W-pI.190.11. And so again we make the only choice that ever can be made; we choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven. 2 Let our gratitude unto our Teacher fill our hearts, as we are free to choose our joy instead of pain, our holiness in place of sin, the peace of God instead of conflict, and the light of Heaven for the darkness of the world.

This is such an important lesson to me that I am going to do this a little differently, this morning.

Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes that will not disappear if seen aright. For pain proclaims God cruel. How could it be real in any form? It witnesses to God the Father’s hatred of His Son, the sinfulness He sees in him, and His insane desire for revenge and death.

Pain is not a fact, but merely a wrong perspective. This means that I am seeing something wrong and pain will disappear if I change my perspective. In fact, Jesus emphasizes this when he says that there is no form it takes that will not disappear if seen aright. The reason we can know that pain is not real is that for it to be real, God would have to be cruel.

I bet that many people who have had extreme pain or chronic pain have thought that God must think him guilty and is punishing his Son for his sins. I knew a woman who had many physical challenges and suffered a lot of pain for most of her life. She believed that this was her plight because of some sin, if not actually on her part, then because man is inherently sinful.

She tried to appease God by offering her pain as a sacrifice to Him in hopes of a reward after death. If she is right, then God is indeed, cruel and awful. Is it more likely, she is seeing things from the wrong perspective? Could she have watched her pain disappear if she had been willing to see this differently? Jesus says that this is exactly what would have happened.

Can such projections be attested to? Can they be anything but wholly false? Pain is but witness to the Son’s mistakes in what he thinks he is. It is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed; for attack on what is wholly unassailable. It is a nightmare of abandonment by an Eternal Love, which could not leave the Son whom It created out of love.

Jesus is telling us that when we experience pain, and he is not making a difference between the forms and degrees pain can take, it is part of our dream, not reality. We are having this fierce dream because we believe we are guilty of leaving God and He has abandoned us. Neither is possible. We, being the Sons of God are created unassailable and God is Eternal Love, and Love does not abandon what it creates.

Pain is a sign illusions reign in place of truth. It demonstrates God is denied, confused with fear, perceived as mad, and seen as traitor to Himself. If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real, there is no God. For vengeance is not part of love. And fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain.

We are using pain to prove that God is not God and we are not His Son. The apparent existence of pain proves that God is not Love because vengeance is not part of love. It also proves that we are not eternal because only in a body can we experience pain of any sort, and so if we are in pain, we must be the body. We must be corruptible. Through the experience of pain, we think that first, we have slain God making Him something He is not, then we kill His Son that through the death of the body we have proclaimed his reality.

Peace to such foolishness! The time has come to laugh at such insane ideas. There is no need to think of them as savage crimes, or secret sins with weighty consequence. Who but a madman could conceive of them as cause of anything? Their witness, pain, is mad as they, and no more to be feared than the insane illusions which it shields, and tries to demonstrate must still be true.

The insane illusion which pain shields is the belief we have forever altered God and taken over as our own creator, making of ourselves something mortal and corruptible. And we are therefore guilty and deserving of pain and death. What does Jesus say to this premise? He tells us it is so ridiculous that we should be laughing at it, not taking it seriously.

It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you.

This is the paragraph that gets right to the point. Up until now, Jesus has been leading us to understand that we are doing this to ourselves. He has been showing us that we are only punishing ourselves because we mistakenly believe we have affected Reality with our little games of separation and that we deserve to be punished.

Now he is telling us outright that the only cause of pain is our thoughts. Let me repeat that. “It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain.” Nothing outside of us can cause us pain. Not the cruel words of someone who is supposed to love us. Not the abandonment of the special love in our life. Not the loss of financial support. Not the death of a loved one. Not any illness or accident. It is only our thoughts that cause us pain. “No one but yourself affects you.”

If you are paying attention to this, it might seem like Jesus just pulled the rug out from under you when you think of it. Shoot, the very foundation on which you stand as a self-created body begins to dissolve right from under you. Pain, in which Jesus seems to include all forms of suffering even unto death, is a thought in our mind.

Germs didn’t make you sick, rather you made germs as an agent to bring about suffering in a way that allows you to feel like a helpless victim of a cruel and vengeful God. Pain is not the inevitable consequence of loss, but a state you choose for yourself because you believe you are a sinner and deserve to suffer.

There are no accidents to mangle your body. They are carefully arranged illusions to prove once again how unworthy and unloved you truly are, how abandoned by your God, and how real is the fragile and vulnerable little self you have made to replace the eternal Spirit that you were created to be.

But you and I are not any of this and we can extricate ourselves from the web of deceit that makes up our illusion of pain and death. These following sentences are our way out, our very salvation, and just as we made this insane illusion, we can choose to return to reality. Here is what Jesus tells us.

“There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness.”

He has spent the lesson so far helping us to see our wrong perspective, the perspective that is pain. Now he is showing us the way out of this world of pain and suffering. He is showing us the right perspective. The wrong perspective, the perspective of believing we are sinners and are being punished by a vengeful God is what actually causes all pain.

Seeing ourselves for what we are, powerful and eternal beings of love and life, beloved children of Love Itself, will immediately undo the consequences of the wrong perspective. As our true Self, we have the power to dominate all things. We recognize what we are and all things become harmless before us and they accept our holy will as theirs. Accepting who we are we see the innocence and holiness of all things. Those sentences have become a mantra I use when I become confused and choose pain for myself. They are a powerful proclamation of our identity.

My holy brother, think of this awhile: The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. It merely represents your thoughts. And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind, and choose the joy of God as what you really want. Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable, forever and forever. And would you deny a little corner of your mind its own inheritance, and keep it as a hospital for pain; a sickly place where living things must come at last to die?

The world you see does nothing. It does not make you sick. It does not take from you what you need. It does not abandon you. It does not hurt you. It does nothing! It merely represents your thoughts and will change entirely as you change your mind. Decide what you really want is God and the joy and love that is God, and everything changes. Change your mind and change the world! And let’s not overlook the part where he tells us that we are using a little corner of our mind as a hospital for pain. Very expressive, Jesus. And thanks for the reminder that it is only a small part of our mind that sleeps.

The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects. As an illusion, it is what you wish.

If I were to paint a picture of a wedding scene in which two people are experiencing a joyful moment, that picture would be the effect of my imagination. It would remain frozen in time, never to be anything but what it is. As an effect of my imagination, it cannot become a sad picture or a tragic picture. Effects don’t have their own effects; they cannot cause anything. This is what I think of when Jesus talks about the world being causeless. The world is like that picture I paint; it is what I make of it and it cannot add to itself or make itself different.

Your idle wishes represent its pains. Your strange desires bring it evil dreams. Your thoughts of death envelop it in fear, while in your kind forgiveness does it live.

Pain is the thought of evil taking form, and working havoc in your holy mind.

What thoughts are so important to us that we would pay the ransom of pain in order to keep them? Often it is the belief that we need to right. I’m astounded at I used to believe that being right seemed so necessary. When I see that thought in my mind these days, I laugh it away. Another reason I have noticed is fear, The ego insists that fear keeps us safe. I refuse to believe that anymore. It is absurd. And how we treasure the idea of judgment as if judgment is power when it is really suffering.

We have a Teacher who will help us see everything differently if we only ask. We do not have to be subjugated by our wrong-minded thoughts. We do not have to suffer pain. Pain is a sign that we are sleeping. It’s time to wake up!  It’s time to remember who we are and to accept our holiness.

Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free. In pain is God denied the Son He loves. In pain does fear appear to triumph over love, and time replace eternity and Heaven. And the world becomes a cruel and a bitter place, where sorrow rules and little joys give way before the onslaught of the savage pain that waits to end all joy in misery.

Again, Jesus is telling us, driving home the point, that pain is our way of keeping God at bay, triumphing over good, and basically making sure that our wishes to experience not-god do not get overturned by reality. As long as we suffer, we can use it as proof that we are independent of God, and not in Him or part of Him because in Him there is no suffering. And in pretending it is God who chooses suffering for us, we can protect our little game through fear of returning Home. In fact, without the fear of God, we would know His Love and would fall into Him in ecstasy. Game over.

Lay down your arms, and come without defense into the quiet place where Heaven’s peace holds all things still at last. Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear. Let no attack enter with you. Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness.

Here will you understand there is no pain. Here does the joy of God belong to you. This is the day when it is given you to realize the lesson that contains all of salvation’s power. It is this: Pain is illusion; joy, reality. Pain is but sleep; joy is awakening. Pain is deception; joy alone is truth.

We are being invited to sink into our holy mind to find God and rest there awhile allowing the split to be healed. In this quiet, still place of absolute Love, we are given the space to heal. Reading all of this and accepting responsibility for our plight, we can easily fall into guilt if we don’t do this with the Holy Spirit. We can start to feel overwhelmed with the sheer scope of the problem if we forget that it is not our job to heal ourselves. That is the function of the Holy Spirit. Our part is to show up with as much willingness to relinquish our confused beliefs as we can and to accept His gift of a healed mind.

And so again we make the only choice that ever can be made; we choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven. Let our gratitude unto our Teacher fill our hearts, as we are free to choose our joy instead of pain, our holiness in place of sin, the peace of God instead of conflict, and the light of Heaven for the darkness of the world.

The world of pain and suffering and death is a thought in our mind. Let go of the thought that you want to keep this in place, and the thought of God will rise up to take its place. Pain, suffering, and death disappear as if they had never been, because they have never been, except in our minds. We chose them, we can banish them.

We can practice this as we can everything we are learning in the Course. I do it all the time. I notice pain in my body and I remind myself that pain is not real. If pain is real, God is not. I remind myself that this is just another thought in my mind and one easily released as I remember who I am. Can the Son of God be at the mercy of a false thought in a confused mind?

As I remember the truth of my being, I use the power that is mine to see it all differently. I see from a different perspective and fear no longer controls my mind. I see the body and the circumstances surrounding the pain as innocent choices, however misguided. I release them to the Holy Spirit in my mind where they are undone as they accept my holy will. I have done this many times.

I love the Rules for Decision (Chapter 30 of the Text) and can use this process here.  I have realized that pain is just another decision I make, and obviously one I make with ego. So I practice the reversal of that decision. I realize having made it with the ego was a mistake, and letting it go with the simple and gentle steps given me in that section of the Course, I ask for another way to see. I want to make all my decisions with the Holy Spirit, not with the ego.

I still accept pain sometimes and I know this is just ego thinking running my mind temporarily. I see myself do it, and sometimes I make a different choice right then. Other times, I stay in my confusion and if the pain is bad enough I resort to magical means for relief. But even then, I do it with a laugh knowing that it is ridiculous. I also remind myself that even magic could not work if it were not my desire for it to do so. In this way, I continue to undo the ego even as it drives me.

REGINA’S TIPS

I feel like I am whispering a great secret that most of the world does not want to know, a secret for which I can be slain, when I say:

You do not have to suffer.

There have been several times when friends were suffering, and I tried to help by letting them know they could let go of the idea that caused their suffering. Each time my friends have retaliated with attack. It was as if I was attacking them when I let them know how easy it is to be free of suffering, and so they attacked back.

I suppose I was attacking them. I was attacking their attachment to suffering without realizing how much they still wanted it. It was like trying to take a worn out stuffed animal from a child before the child is ready to give it up.

You may think you don’t love suffering, but are you sure you’re right? The best way to find out is to answer this question for yourself: Do you suffer over anything ever? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then you are still clinging to that worn out toy.

Just like everyone else, I used to believe that suffering was the natural outcome of certain circumstances. Gradually I let go of that idea. The final stronghold for me was the belief that I had to suffer because of extreme physical pain. I came to see even that is not true. All suffering is caused by thought that we choose to believe, and there isn’t another cause of suffering at all.

Each time I pointed out to friends that they could let go of suffering, and they became angry with me, they always indicated that their form of suffering was special. Thiers was the special circumstance that validated suffering. This is a clue that points to a thought in the mind, a thought that this lesson is helping to uncover. The idea is that suffering is more real than God (than truth).

That belief is in your mind if you suffer. I know, because I uncovered it in my own mind. The ego clings to that idea, because that idea protects the ego thought system. It seems to confirm that the ego thought system is truth, and the teachings about truth are merely idle fantasy. The worn out toy that you cling to when you suffer is the false self.

Here are a few things that today’s lesson says about the choice to suffer:

• “Pain is a wrong perspective.”
• “Pain is but witness to the Son’s mistakes in what he thinks he is.
• “Pain is a sign illusions reign in place of truth.”
• “It is your thoughts alone that cause pain.”
• “There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression.”
• “No one but yourself affects you.”
• “The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects. As an illusion, it is what you wish.”
• “Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free.”
• “Pain is illusion; joy is reality.”
• “Pain is deception; joy alone is truth.”

The attachment to suffering is a deeply held attachment. This is why my friends felt attacked when I pointed out they did not have to suffer. If you’d like to be free of that attachment, here’s what you can do:

When you suffer, look to see if you can see your choice to suffer. The choice could be a very simple decision. It could be as simple as the decision, “I can not be happy with this.” Look for what you believe must be different.

As you look for your choice to suffer, you may find several little things that you can change your mind about when you see them. For example, you might be able to quickly let go of the idea that you have to suffer if it’s too hot, or if the husband is late to dinner, or if there is traffic on the highway, etcetera. Each little change of mind is important, because you are reversing the decision to cling to suffering.

Either now or eventually, you will come to the choice to suffer itself. This will appear as a belief, something that you took as absolutely true. It may feel impossible to let go of it when you see it. My recommendation is that you acknowledge it as a belief rather than a truth, and give your willingness for it to be healed. Let grace take care of the rest.

In other words, demonstrate your willingness to let go of the belief in suffering by changing your mind with the little things, and give your willingness with the apparent bigger things. This is how the attachment to suffering will be undone.

If you’d like to hear the story about how the attachment to suffering was finally undone for me, you can listen to this audio.

Letting go of the attachment to suffering is not a little thing. It is letting go of a critical defense in the ego thought system.