A Course in Miracles,
Lesson 190 I choose the love of God instead of pain.
Pain is a wrong perspective.
When pain is experienced in any form,
It is a proof of self-deception.
Pain is not a fact at all.
There is no form that pain takes that will not disappear if seen in the right way.
Pain proclaims God is cruel.
How could pain be real in any form?
Pain witnesses to God the father's hatred of his child.
Pain witnesses to God the sinfulness he sees in his child.
Pain witnesses God's insane desire for revenge and death.
Can such projections be attested to?
Can they be anything but wholly false?
Pain is but witness to God's children's mistakes in what we think we are.
Pain is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed.
Retaliation for an attack on what is wholly unassailable.
Retaliation is a nightmare of abandonment by an eternal love,
Which could not leave
the child whom it created out of love.
Pain is a sign illusions reign in place of truth.
Pain demonstrates that God is denied.
That God is confused with fear.
That God is perceived as mad,
Seen as a traitor to himself.
If God is real,
There is no pain.
If pain is real,
There is no God.
Vengeance is not a part of love.
Fear,
Denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead has shown that death is the
victor over life.
The body is the child of God.
The body is corruptible in death.
The body is as mortal as the father that has been slain.
Peace to such foolishness.
The time has come to laugh at such insane ideas.
There is no need to think of these ideas as savage crimes or secret sins with weighty
consequences.
Who but a madman could conceive of these ideas as cause of anything?
Their witness,
Pain,
Is as mad as they are.
Pain is no more to be feared than the insane illusions which it shields.
The illusions which pain 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 that has the power to make you ill or make you sad or weak
or frail.
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 all things,
They will accept your holy will as theirs.
What was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness.
My holy brothers and sisters,
Think of this a while.
The world you see does nothing.
It has no effects at all.
It merely represents your thoughts.
A world will change entirely as you elect to change your mind,
As you choose the joy
of God as what you really want.
Your higher self is radiant in this holy joy,
Unchanged,
Unchanging,
Unchangeable,
Forever and forever.
Would you deny a little corner of your mind its own inheritance?
Would you keep your mind as a hospital for pain?
Would you keep your mind 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,
The world cannot make effects.
As an illusion,
The world is what you wish.
Your idle wishes represent the pains of the world.
Your strange desires bring the world evil dreams.
Your thoughts of death envelop the world in fear,
While,
In your kind forgiveness,
Does
the world live.
Pain is the thought of evil taking form and working hammock in your holy mind.
Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free.
In pain is God denied the child he loves.
In pain does not fear appear to triumph over love.
In pain does time replace eternity and heaven.
The world becomes a cruel and a bitter place,
A place where sorrow rules,
A place where
little joys give way before the onslaught of the savage pain,
The 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 fear.
Let no attack enter with you.
Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat.
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.
The lesson is this.
Pain is illusion.
Joy is reality.
Pain is sleep.
Joy is awakening.
Pain is deception.
Joy alone is truth.
So again we make the only choice that can ever be made.
We choose between illusions and the truth.
We choose between pain and joy.
We choose between hell and heaven.
Let our gratitude to our teacher fill our hearts as we are free to choose our joy instead
of pain.
We are free to choose our holiness in place of sin.
We are free to choose the peace of God instead of conflict.
We are free to choose the light of heaven for the darkness of the world.
I choose the joy of God instead of pain.
Pain is sleep.
Joy is awakening.
Pain is deception.
Joy alone is truth.
I choose the joy of God instead of pain.
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
