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 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 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.