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July-September, 2012

Good News! Pain Is Not Real!

by Rev. Myron Jones, O.M.C.

The Course is very simple. The only thing that makes it seem complicated or hard to understand is my resistance to believing what it says. Sometimes that resistance is active and other times I simply overlook the words. This year when I did Lesson 190, for some reason I decided to believe what I was reading. It was like I had never read the lesson before and was seeing it for the first time.

This Lesson says that “If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real there is no God.” These are simple, one syllable words. Anyone can understand them. The concept is simple and understandable. The only disconnect between understanding and experiencing them is the decision to accept or deny. I had to ask myself why I would bother doing this work if I did not intend to accept what I am told.

One sentence in paragraph 5 is the key to this lesson. It says: “It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain.” Again, simple one syllable words that are easy to understand. A simple easily understood concept. Do I choose to believe it? I took inventory of my relationships, my emotional state, my financial situation, my body. I decided the body would be the best place to practice this lesson.

I’ve talked about my experience with this in my postings, so I will just re-cap and bring us up to date.

First: When I read, “If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real there is no God,” I realized that this made perfect sense. God is all there is and so I must be in God. God is not pain, so pain can’t be real. I cannot be in pain, no matter what my experience seems to be telling me.

Second: It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. So the problem cannot be in my body. It must be in my mind. This was reinforced for me one day while I was practicing this lesson. I had some severe pain in my leg and I used my current mantra which comes from the book, The Inner Ramana. Regina asked, “What is pain?” and the answer was, “Pain is nothing.” That is so easy to remember that I often use it to help me move my thoughts off the pain and allow the Holy Spirit to talk to me.

On this particular day I felt a really bad pain shooting down my leg. I grabbed my leg and through gritted teeth I said, “What is pain? It is nothing.” Then I said, “Holy Spirit, if pain is nothing, what is this I feel in my leg?” He said, “That’s your belief in pain.” Ahh. Of course. So it is not my leg that needs healing because it is not my leg that is causing me to be in pain. It is my mind, my thoughts that are the cause. I have a belief in pain and suffering in my mind and that belief is being projected on the body.

I have spent all the days since I did Lesson 190, on July 8th of this year, practicing diligently. Every time I have a pain in my body, I use it as a reminder that pain is not real. Pain has a new purpose for me now. It is to trigger this healing thought. This pain is not about the body. It is a reminder that I still have the belief in pain and suffering in my mind, and to give me a chance to make another choice. Everything in my life has one purpose — to help me wake up by choosing God over ego, truth over illusion. Why should pain be any different?

So this is what has happened. I began using the body for this practice because I have had a lot of pain in my legs. I drive for a living and after driving for many hours, I would start experiencing sciatica pain and over a period of a couple of years that pain has gotten more severe and was for awhile almost unbearable. I talked to my boss about quitting my job because I didn’t think I could take the pain anymore. Then in July I started using Lesson 190 to heal my belief in pain, and things began to change.

At first I was just saying the words more than I was meaning them. I wanted them to be true and on one level knew they were, but the thing is, my experience did not match the words and so it was hard for me to hold onto the truth. I was constantly being distracted by what seemed to be happening in the world (specifically my body) and would start to believe the pain and doubt Jesus.

But I know that what the Course says is true. I know it in my Heart, even if my head is confused. So I kept doing the practice and slowly I noticed that I believed the words more and more. I stopped thinking of the pain as something to dread and became grateful for the opportunity to practice, knowing that I was healing my mind, and by extension healing the one mind. This is my job, my purpose, the reason for my seeming existence here, and I was doing it.

A lovely side effect is that the pain has lessened to the point that it is no longer an issue with my job. I still get pain but, instead of being nearly constant, it is much less frequent and not nearly as severe. I continue my practice. Any pain, headache, nausea, stiff neck, is an opportunity to heal the thoughts in the mind.

Then recently, while I was removing staples from a chair seat I want to re-cover, I gouged a hole in my finger with the screwdriver. I grabbed my hand protectively waiting for the pain, and when it didn’t come immediately, I remembered, “Oh yeah, pain is not real.” Ok, I admit, I was surprised when the pain never came. But not too surprised.

I bled the finger to get rid of bacteria from the dirty screwdriver and it didn’t hurt. I washed it with soap and water, and it didn’t hurt. I poured alcohol on it and it stung but not too bad. I realized that the belief in pain and suffering is being healed in my mind. I am not projecting pain onto the body as readily as I have in the past.

My finger began healing very quickly but a few days later I noticed that it seemed red and was a little tender. It looked like it was getting infected. I had thoughts of doubt and uncertainty about the whole thing, though it is hard to completely discount the lack of pain. But I asked the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of my doubts.

I stood there looking at my finger, wondering what I should do. I asked the Holy Spirit what He would have me do and without thinking about it at all, I touched my finger and said, “heal.” And it did. Almost immediately it began to heal. By the next day the redness was gone and there was no tenderness, and now it is just a rough spot on my finger.

As it happens, I have been experiencing urinary discomfort ever since I had a kidney stone and the last few weeks it has gotten really painful. It was bad enough that I made an appointment with a urologist, and that I was worried about what could be wrong. If it was simple irritation from the stone or the procedure, then it should be getting better, not worse. After I made the appointment, the pain became almost constant and I considered calling the doctor’s office and begging them to fit me in sooner.

But as I was standing there watching my finger heal right before my eyes, I experienced a stab of pain in my urinary tract and thought, “What the heck?” I put my hand on my side where the pain seemed to start and said, “heal.” And it did. Right there. Right that moment.  And after weeks of progressively worsening pain, it is now gone and has not returned.

What happened next is so typical of the ego that you have to laugh. I started thinking about what just happened. What did it mean? Was this going to be the way of things from now on? Was my mind completely healed of the belief in pain? Could I heal anything that went wrong? Could I do this for others? Is this the way I was supposed to do it; just put my hand on something and say, heal?

What would people think if I told them about this? Would they roll their eyes? Would they think me delusional? Would they think I was arrogant? What if I did it and it didn’t work? Would people then laugh at me? Would that mean I had fallen out of favor with God?

Whoa, the ego went too far. I realized that I was listening to the thinking mind and it was misleading me. I asked the Holy Spirit for His words. He reminded me not to think about this. He said not to decide what it means and not to make decisions about the future based on what happened now. Instead, do as I did today, and come to Him each time as if the last time had not happened.

I let it all go and simply felt gratitude to myself for the work I had been willing to do and to the Holy Spirit for His help in healing my mind. I felt gratitude that I am obviously letting go of some of the beliefs that block my awareness of the truth and are an obstacle to my remembrance of God and of my True Self. I returned my mind to my only purpose, the healing of the mind.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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