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 which 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 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.
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. There is nothing in
the world which 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.
My holy brothers, 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 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 will. 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.
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.
Lay down your arms and come without defence 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 judgement 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 which 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 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.
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