LESSON ONE HUNDRED-NINETY

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: The Course text is in bold face. The Guidance is in normal type In His Guidance, He has asked Me to capitalize the pronouns You and We as an acknowledgement of the Divinity of All of Us, an acknowledgement of Equality, an expression of His Love and respect for You. When You see the word ‘YOU’ capitalized in the Guidance, know that He is not just speaking to YOU, He is honoring YOU.

 

L e s s o n  190

I choose the joy of God instead of pain.  It seems like such a simple choice, a no-brainer, so to speak.  If so, then why would I have ever suffered.  Guess I must have made a different choice, without knowing it?

Well Sister You could say that, for the moment that You abdicated to the ego, it began to make all Your choices, always choosing for but its survival.

¹ Pain is a wrong perspective. – For it cannot be Reality for God never made it. – When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. – You are hiding You from You, deliberately unknowing that You are the most holy Son of God.  Every One of You.  Thus You’re free from pain. – 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?  It slops out – and I use that word advisedly – from the belief that God is wreaking vengeance on You.  How preposterous!  It is the ego denial of Love.

² Pain is but witness to the Son’s mistakes in what he thinks he is. – You really think that You succeeded in “cutting the cord”.  There is no cord to be cut because there is no separation! – 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.  Pure and simple: it’s projection; the Son puts out on the Father what He has felt about some Brothers.  These are but the ego’s thoughts and emotions.

³ 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, – and He surely is – there is no pain. If pain is real, – it surely isn’t – there is no God.  – So states the ego, the big-mouthed liar. –  For vengeance is not part of love.  Not the Love of God; only the so-called ‘love’ of so-called humans.

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.  That is the entire purpose – along with ‘birth’ – of the ‘body’ seen as ‘matter’.  Would You be this?  Here comes Christ asking You this question once again.  Would You be this?  I wouldn’t; hence the Resurrection, showing the unreality of dying

.

⁴ Peace to such foolishness! – Foolishness of pain and sin and dying. Ego’s inventions.  Pure insanity! – 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.  None of this has ever happened!  It’s only bizarre dreaming.

⁵ It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Thinking itself is painful and pointless!

Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. – There is nothing external to Your mind!  That’s where all of the ego separation is happening! – There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression.  So much for God smiting You!  An ego invention to keep You from coming Home.  You’re so very Loved.

No one but yourself affects you. – Hard to face: You’re doing it to Yourself. – 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. – Son of God and One with God, the Universe is Yours to Love and cherish. – As you perceive the harmlessness in them, – all of God’s Ideas – they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness.  As You accept and cherish Your own innocence and holiness, all things thenn presence forth Your goodness.

⁶ 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. See an end to ugly politics, religious hatred, greed and corruption, violence and cruelty.  The Son of God is but Self-governed. Those dreams belong only to the ego.

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?  God is but Life, and, therefore, so are You.

⁷ 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.  The message is the same: You’re doing it to Yourself!  The good news is that You can stop it any time!

⁸ 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.  You can stop this now.

⁹ 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.  Where is this Holy Place, this sacred Altar, but in Your mind.

¹⁰ 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.  It’s very simple: only Good is Real.

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. 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.  Let Us make the choice, right here and right now.

 

INTRODUCTION to Lessons 181 – 200

^I181:1 Our next few lessons make a special point of firming up your willingness to make your weak commitment strong, your scattered goals blend into one intent. – All commitment does start with this one thing: just the little willingness to do it, whatever it takes.  So even if You do slip and fall, You get right up again. – You are not asked for total dedication all the time, as yet. But you are asked to practice now in order to attain the sense of peace such unified commitment will bestow, if only intermittently. It is experiencing this which makes it sure that you will give your total willingness to following the way the course sets forth.  How did He segue from the little willingness to total?!  (He is laughing hard!)  Only the ego would ask that question!  By now, don’t You think that You should know Me!  Give Me an inch of good, and I’ll give You back a mile of it.  Give Me a drop of Love, and I’ll return to You an ocean.

With what are We dealing but the Divine Qualities of God.  Life, Truth and Love.  Spirit, Soul and Mind.  Holy Divine Principle, Its Joy and Peace.  How precious are the attributes of God.  They are Your treasure.  And where Your treasure is, there is Your Love.

² Our lessons now are geared specifically to widening horizons – by loosening the ego’s stranglehold that it has on You – and direct approaches to the special blocks which keep your vision narrow and too limited to let you see the value of our goal.  What has it been that has severely narrowed Your horizons?

Well, what else but sir and lady ego?

We are attempting now to lift these blocks, however briefly. Words alone can not convey the sense of liberation which their lifting brings. – Yes, that day that Helen had, recounted in “Absence From Felicity”₁ is a perfect example.  Every day – and every moment can and will be like that! – But the experience of freedom and of peace that comes as you give up your tight control of what you see speaks for itself. Your motivation will be so intensified that words become of little consequence. You will be sure of what you want and what is valueless.  The ego will attempt to deter Your progress, tell You that You can’t sustain such an experience.  And yet the ego is always lying.  Do not believe it.  Tell it to shut up, and really mean it!

³ And so we start our journey beyond words by concentrating first on what impedes our progress still. Experience of what exists beyond defensiveness remains beyond achievement while it is denied. It may be there, but you cannot accept its presence.  For You are quite defended against It.  And what does live in the Silence but experience of perfect Love and safety. So we now attempt to go past all defenses for a little while each day. No more than this is asked because no more than this is needed. It will be enough to guarantee the rest will come.  One Holy Moment is but a promise of All which await Your invitation!

 

 

[Thank you Dear Brother]

*Sun~Rose is the scribe of the recently published book, “YOU ARE LOVED AND SAFE: PREP NOTES FOR EXPERIENCING GOD’S LOVE“, Jesus’ Guidance on the Miracle Principles

She is also author of, “RADIANT LIFE: RAW FOOD AND THE PRESENCE OF LOVE”

BOTH now available on amazon.com