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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X.The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 8. 6-19-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 8
8 Miracles are in accord with the Will of God, Whose Will you do not know because you are confused about what you will. This means that you are confused about what you are. If you are God’s Will and do not accept His Will, you are denying joy. The miracle is therefore a lesson in what joy is. Being a lesson in sharing it is a lesson in love, which is joy. Every miracle is thus a lesson in truth, and by offering truth you are learning the difference between pain and joy.

Jesus says that I am confused about what I am, and that is true for sure! I am confused about my will which I think is different than the Will of God. Since I am the Will of God, this leaves me confused about what I am. God’s Will is joy and love and peace. Because I think I can have a will that is different from God, I deny myself joy and love and peace.

As I allow my mind to be healed, the truth returns to me. This is a miracle. Actually, this is THE miracle from which all true effects extend. As I am healed and I begin to remember what I am, I naturally share what I know, and this sharing is love and love is joy. Through the miracle of a healed mind, the difference between pain and joy which was once obscure to me now becomes clear.

I used to think that pleasure was deciding for myself what I am. I used to think pleasure was successfully defending my right to be different from my brothers and from God, which meant that I must defend against them so that I could maintain my own separate will. I can remember feeling a surge of adrenaline when I seemed to win against another, and believing that was joy. But it was just adrenalin after all, and when it receded all I had left was my fear and guilt.

I still get confused about what I am, and think that it makes me happy to decide on a personal will, but I soon remember that this can’t be right. I cannot overcome what I am, which is the Will of God. No matter how sick or tired I make the body, I have proved nothing. I am not the body. I am the Son of God, His holy Will. No matter how impoverished I seem to be, I change nothing because I was created with everything and I cannot overcome God’s Will that I be everything.

Through the miracle I have discovered that I don’t want to overcome God’s Will. I was created in love and truth and joy and that is all I am. As I accept the miracle of a healed mind, I accept that I am as I was created and I rejoice in that truth! If I become confused today, I ask for the Atonement. I want to remember only what is true.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 7. 6-18-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 6
7 Even the relinquishment of your false decision-making prerogative, which the ego guards so jealously, is not accomplished by your wish. It was accomplished for you by the Will of God, Who has not left you comfortless. His Voice will teach you how to distinguish between pain and joy, and will lead you out of the confusion you have made. There is no confusion in the mind of a Son of God, whose will must be the Will of the Father, because the Father’s Will is His Son.

Repeatedly, we are being told that we did not create ourselves, and do not have the power to do so. In this way only, we are different from God. Because we did not create ourselves, we cannot be anything that is not God. There is a clear difference between making and creating, and a clear difference between what is real and what is believed.

I seem to suffer from the confusion in my mind. This confusion is something I made and because I made it, I believe it. Because I believe it, it is true for me. But it is not truth.  There is no confusion in the mind of God’s Son because there is no confusion in God. I can pretend to be confused and convince myself that I am, but I cannot be confused because there is no confusion in the mind.

I remember the first time I read the first two sentences of this paragraph. I felt tremendous resistance to the idea that my decision-making prerogative is not accomplished by my wish. I felt frightened, actually, like the big bad god was only playing with me, pretending to let me decide on things but was going to crush me under his will when he got bored with me.

Through the slow but steady healing of my mind I understand enough now to know that there is no separation between the Son and the Father. We share the same Will. The only will that is endangered is the ego will, which is not actually a will, but a wish. The ego is screaming and jumping up and down at the thought that I might not be interested in playing it’s game of deciding which illusion I like best. But interestingly enough, I can barely hear it’s antics.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 6. 6-17-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 6
6 The Holy Spirit is perfectly trustworthy, as you are. God Himself trusts you, and therefore your trustworthiness is beyond question. It will always remain beyond question, however much you may question it. I said before that you are the Will of God. His Will is not an idle wish, and your identification with His Will is not optional, since it is what you are. Sharing His Will with me is not really open to choice, though it may seem to be. The whole separation lies in this error. The only way out of the error is to decide that you do not have to decide anything. Everything has been given you by God’s decision. That is His Will, and you cannot undo it.

I feel like a fool as I sit here asking to wake up, trying to align my will with God’s Will. I spend the day looking at false thoughts in my mind and letting go of the belief in guilt, and asking for Christ’s Vision as I interact with my brothers. And all the time, this is done. I am asking for what is already mine. It could not be otherwise because it is the Will of God. My confusion lies in the belief that I have a will separate from the Will of God, that there could ever exist anything that is not the Will of God, and that I have somehow undone His Will.

Here is what I think right now. I keep asking for what I already have because this is the way I convince myself I don’t have it. This is just another ego strategy for keeping the illusion going. It has occurred to me lately that I can’t believe I still entertain ego thinking when even as I do it, I know it can’t be right.

I can’t believe I get sick when I know that the body cannot sicken and die unless that is my desire. I know this is true. And yet, I choose sickness, and craziest of all, I go to the doctor or take medicine even though I know that the cause is in my mind, not in the body. I know that I chose the sickness and I know that the medicine is not the cure, and still I pretend I can’t stop getting sick and I pretend the medicine helps.

I know that we cannot return our full awareness to the Kingdom with guilt in our mind. I do not doubt this for a moment. But then I turn around and project blame on some hapless person just dreaming their dream, or I decide I am just so guilty for something I thought or something I did years ago that now I have to be depressed about it. I do this, and at the same time, I know it’s crazy.

When I was a child I would play at being a princess and while I was doing this I believed I was that princess. I was so caught up in the story, the world around me ceased to exist. The little girl I was didn’t exist for me. But no matter how long I played this game, and how completely lost in the play I was, nothing changed. I pretended to be a princess and in my mind I was a princess. But no amount of pretending changed who I was, and I didn’t have to do anything to restore me to the little girl I was. I just stopped pretending to be something else.

That is all that is happening now. I am pretending to be something I am not. And now I am pretending I can’t stop, that there is something else I must do to fix this. I know this is the ego mind that resists waking from the dream. I know that I am not lost or condemned. I know that I do not have a will separate from God.

I know that this separation idea is all done and complete, and always has been. I am not confused. There is nothing for me to decide on, and nothing for me to do other than to accept that there is only God’s Will and I am part of it. I will wake up when I stop pretending that I can’t.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 5. 6-16-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 5
5 The Holy Spirit always sides with you and with your strength. As long as you avoid His guidance in any way, you want to be weak. Yet weakness is frightening. What else, then, can this decision mean except that you want to be fearful? The Holy Spirit never asks for sacrifice, but the ego always does. When you are confused about this distinction in motivation, it can only be due to projection. Projection is a confusion in motivation, and given this confusion, trust becomes impossible. No one gladly obeys a guide he does not trust, but this does not mean that the guide is untrustworthy. In this case, it always means that the follower is. However, this, too, is merely a matter of his own belief. Believing that he can betray, he believes that everything can betray him. Yet this is only because he has elected to follow false guidance. Unable to follow this guidance without fear, he associates fear with guidance, and refuses to follow any guidance at all. If the result of this decision is confusion, this is hardly surprising.

I can understand why it is that we want to be weak. We used our strength to do the impossible and in doing so we have become convinced that we have attacked God. It seems our strength has betrayed us and left us fearful and guilty. Now we just want to keep our head down. If we think our guilt is noticed, we want to point God toward someone else. Being weak and frightened seems to be a better option than being strong and allowing that strength to lead us into more trouble. It seems that being week is better than being found out by God.

Since we believe that we betrayed God and over and over we betray our brother, we naturally believe everything is betraying us. Certainly when we follow the ego, we are betrayed. The ego, that little chatter box in our head, is constantly guiding us to do things that wind up getting us even deeper into trouble. It constantly warns us of trouble and encourages us to defend ourselves.

Here is an example. I wanted to spend more time with my daughter. The ego advised me to be careful about that. It went something like this: She has her own life, and if you impose too much, she will start to avoid you. She is very kind and will spend time with you but will come to resent you. She already has to give time to her father who is very needy, a good mother wouldn’t add to her burden. If she spends Saturday with her dad and Sunday with you, when will she have any time to herself?

So I seldom called to ask for her company and she stopped calling me. The ego congratulated me on being strong and independent. Then the ego said that she was selfish and thoughtless for not calling me. The ego said that she didn’t love me or respect me, and that must mean I was not a good mother and started reminding me of all the things I did wrong. Then the ego pointed out that she was ungrateful for all I did for her. It was her fault I felt like this.

At this point, realizing that I had been following an insane guide, I shook off the ego and asked Spirit what I should do. I immediately picked up the phone and started a conversation with my daughter. As it turned out, she was feeling abandoned by me, and was hurt by this. When I tried to explain my reasoning, she wasn’t going for it. Since ten we have moved past this and now enjoy each other’s company nearly every week.

Here is the thing, we have been choosing ego as our guide and since ego is an unreliable guide, we have come to distrust all guides. The only reason this whole situation with my daughter did not spin completely out of control is that I have been slowly learning that I can trust the Holy Spirit to be my Guide. When I realized what I was doing and turned to Him for help, He guided me to approach the situation in love rather than from fear. I stopped thinking about how I could defend myself to how I could love my daughter and myself.

Like many other things in life, betrayal is just a thought in the mind. It is a belief and it is a false belief. It started with the belief we betrayed God when we decided to see what separation would feel like. Now that we believed in betrayal, we began to see it everywhere. Betrayal is not real, but we believe it is and what we believe is real to us. Since we made betrayal, we now must allow it to be undone for us, along with the other things we decided to believe, like guilt, fear, suffering and death.

Just as I did with the situation with my daughter, we must step out in faith, going against the ego belief in fear and guilt, and trust the Holy Spirit will not betray us. If we will do that, if we will turn to Him for guidance, He will teach us that He is trustworthy and will not lead us astray. He will lead us to let go of our belief in betrayal, and all the other lies we learned from listening to ego. We only have to take the first tentative step toward Him and He will leap to our assistance! He will prove Himself a good and reliable Guide.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 4. 6-13-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 4
4 That is why you need to demonstrate the obvious to yourself. It is not obvious to you. You believe that doing the opposite of God’s Will can be better for you. You also believe that it is possible to do the opposite of God’s Will. Therefore, you believe that an impossible choice is open to you, and one which is both fearful and desirable. Yet God wills. He does not wish. Your will is as powerful as His because it is His. The ego’s wishes do not mean anything, because the ego wishes for the impossible. You can wish for the impossible, but you can will only with God. This is the ego’s weakness and your strength.

I wish for lots of things. Right now this moment I wish I could stay home from work. I wish I could have slept longer. I wish I weighed less. I wish I were retired. I wish I could win the lottery. That is just a quick list of the thoughts in my mind under the heading of things I wish. What is so impossible about them? I may never win the lottery, but it is possible. I can’t get up later today, but I could tomorrow. Otherwise, all of them seem possible to me.

When I look at these things closer what I see is that I want to be happy. I want to be happy and I think the way to do it is to have more time for myself with more money to spend and a smaller body to do these things. It is impossible that I get these things and then find I am happy. That is the impossible part. I could have them and discover that there are other things I want and so I am not happy. I know this would happen because it has before… actually, all my life.

Nothing I get really makes me happy. I might be happy for a little bit, but then I discover something else is needed to keep me happy. No thing I buy and no change in circumstances brings perfect happiness. If I get something spectacular, such as when I had my children, all of whom still bring me happiness, they came with problems and fears as I realized how unprepared I was to be a mother and as I anticipated problems. So even in that perfect moment, I was not happy.

In the world of time where we find ourselves at this moment, there is no happiness. There is only fear and guilt and moments of less fear and guilt. I have thought that my wishes fulfilled would bring me joy, and each time I got my wish, I discovered I was wrong. Obviously, I don’t know the difference between pain and joy, because I keep asking for things that I think will bring me joy and I wind up in pain.

When I ask for ego wishes to be fulfilled, I ask for pain. Now that I understand this, I can ask for something different. What if I asked Holy Spirit for joy? What if I asked Him to teach me the difference between pain and joy, and to show me how to ask for joy? Rearranging my story isn’t doing the trick; that is just more wishing. How do I get in touch with my will, the one I share with God? This is what I want. This will bring me joy.

I am being reminded of the times I do this, the times I will instead of wish, the times my will is in alignment with God’s Will. I think of how peaceful I feel and how joyful. This can happen in the middle of whatever ego stuff is hitting the fan. I just suddenly remember truth and I am the clock in the storm, ticking away, completely unaffected by what is happening around me. Calm. Peaceful. Happy.

Holy Spirit, thank you for reminding me that I can do this and what it feels like. Help me remember this today. I woke up thinking how crazy the day is going to be as I try to fit too many things into too short a time. I don’t wish to go back to bed or for today to meet my expectations. What I will is that God’s Will be done and that I relax into that Will. I ask that I not miss this opportunity to surrender into perfection and allow it to sweep me into joy.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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