Day 190

Today's Lesson:

I choose the joy of God instead of pain.

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.

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.

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.

Peace to such foolishness! The time has come to laugh as 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.

It is our thoughts alone that cause us pain. Nothing external to our mind can hurt or injure us in any way. There is no cause beyond ourselves that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but ourselves affect us. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make us ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is we who have the power to dominate all things we see by merely recognizing what we are. As we perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept our holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness.

My holy brother, think of this awhile: The world we see does nothing. It has no effects at all. It merely represents our thoughts. And it will change entirely as we elect to change our mind, and choose the joy of God as what we really want. Our Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable, forever and forever. And would we deny a little corner of our 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 may seem to cause us 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 we wish. Our idle wishes represent its pains. Our strange desires bring it evil dreams. Our thoughts of death envelop it in fear, while in our kind forgiveness does it live.

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

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 us. Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that we hold against our throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which we seek to hide our holiness.

Here will we understand there is no pain. Here does the joy of God belong to us. This is the day when it is given us 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.

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 in stead 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.

Miracles I'm noticing:

Today's lesson is so similar to the books I've read this weekend. In fact, today's lesson is really what The Secret and all the articles and conversations that are floating around is all about. I heard Oprah on her Soul Series XM radio show yesterday talking about how she is finally able to talk about spiritual topics on her radio show because people are starting to understand and accept a more broad spirituality than they were able to accept when she first started talking about spiritual things 10 years ago. She was raised Southern Baptist, and her upbringing was very strict. But she has been able to balance her Christian roots with her "new-age" spirituality and wants to encourage others who feel that way to have a place to go to be supported in their beliefs.

The woman she was talking to yesterday has created a 200-member group in Texas to create dialogue around the Abraham-Hicks conversations as well as The Secret and other ideas that pretty much reflect what today's lesson is saying. There are those in the world who will reject the idea that "Pain is illusion; joy, reality. Pain is but sleep; joy is awakening. Pain is deception; joy alone is truth." People will scoff at this idea like they scoff at The Secret by twisting it to mean that people cause their over poverty and tragedies like 9/11 and Katrina. People who can't yet understand that there is a degree of responsibility in everything that comes into our space will balk at the opportunity to see the world in a different light by working first on their own understanding and shifting the focus from blame and despair to love and light.

I choose to believe as today's lesson points out: "The world I see does nothing. It has no effects at all. It merely represents my thoughts. And it will change entirely as I elect to change my mind, and choose the joy of God as what I really want."

"Thank you." "I love you." "Please forgive me." "I'm sorry." This is very helpful in keeping that idea in mind. All the seemingly disparate ideas and songs and books that came to me this weekend are showing me that this is what I really want. "Thank you!"