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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.

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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.

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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://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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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.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7:X.The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 3. 6-12-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 3
3 The Holy Spirit will direct you only so as to avoid pain. Surely no one would object to this goal if he recognized it. The problem is not whether what the Holy Spirit says is true, but whether you want to listen to what He says. You no more recognize what is painful than you know what is joyful, and are, in fact, very apt to confuse the two. The Holy Spirit’s main function is to teach you to tell them apart. What is joyful to you is painful to the ego, and as long as you are in doubt about what you are, you will be confused about joy and pain. This confusion is the cause of the whole idea of sacrifice. Obey the Holy Spirit, and you will be giving up the ego. But you will be sacrificing nothing. On the contrary, you will be gaining everything. If you believed this, there would be no conflict.

I know someone who thinks that what makes her happy is to decide for herself about everything. She thinks she knows what is best for her and even when she knows she doesn’t know what is best, she thinks that she should decide what she is going to do. She is obstinate about making decisions on her own even when they fly in the face of common sense.

She thinks that being the one that decides is what makes her happy. There is underlying belief that this is what makes her safe, even though she sees this is not always true. Doing what she wants to do is more important to her than living. Even though she may not say this to herself, it is more important to her than Awakening.

I’m looking at this behavior in her because it is so clearly unreasonable that I can use it to understand what Jesus is telling me in this paragraph. This woman will not give up the “right” to direct her life in the way she wants, even though the directions she has been given are for her own good and to keep her body alive. Obviously, she believes that to follow guidance rather than decide for herself would be a sacrifice so great that she would rather die than do it.

She is not guilty for this. It is simply the part she came to learn and teach. This stubbornness has been part of her personality all of her life and so it seems that it is a core issue for her. I’m looking at this from outside, so to speak, so I may be wrong as far as what it means to her, but I can use it for my own understanding regardless.

From my point of view her life is a lesson in the value of surrender. I look at her and I see what not surrendering costs and I am strongly motivated to look at what I hold onto. What do I value above God? What in my life do I think is so important that I would hold onto it even if it meant staying in the illusion?

I see that I still cling to certain special relationships. I have a hard time simply surrendering them to Spirit and letting Him sort them out. I seem to believe that a sacrifice would be asked of me, that putting my relationships in His hands would be like Abraham putting his son on the altar, thinking he had to sacrifice his son’s life to God.

According to the Bible story, Abraham’s hand was stayed at the last moment. What if I trust my special relationships to God and there is no stay of execution? I don’t really believe this, but part of my mind does. I know it does because I haven’t surrendered fully. I, like this woman in my life, believe that I know what is good for me. I believe that deciding what to do with my relationships is better than surrendering them to Holy Spirit and letting Him heal them.

I have surrendered many beliefs to the Holy Spirit, and always I have been rewarded with the joy of a healed mind. Today, I give my willingness to let my special relationships go into His hands. I will let Him direct me. I have enough trust now to do this, not as a sacrifice, but in trust that the Holy Spirit knows better than me what I need.  I now believe that deciding for myself is pain and letting Holy Spirit direct me is joy.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X.The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 2. 6-11-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 2
2 It is surely clear that you can both accept into your mind what is not there, and deny what is. Yet the function God Himself gave your mind through His you may deny, but you cannot prevent. It is the logical outcome of what you are. The ability to see a logical outcome depends on the willingness to see it, but its truth has nothing to do with your willingness. Truth is God’s Will. Share His Will and you share what He knows. Deny His Will as yours, and you are denying His Kingdom and yours.

I have the Kingdom of God and am in the Kingdom of God and nothing can change this because I am that I am. This is not up for debate, nor is it possible to alter it. However, if I choose not to acknowledge my reality, it is as if I am not that. I will seem to be something different, and somewhere different. But seeming and being is hardly the same thing.

If it is my will I can prevent myself from being aware of the truth. I simply refuse to accept it. It is possible for me to do this through my unlimited freedom as God’s Son. However, though I am free to disregard truth, I cannot prevent truth from being true and so it remains in my mind even though I deny its presence. It simply is. Because what I am is always available to me, all I need to do to know my Self again is to decide not to block it from my memory. I do this through the Holy Spirit, Which is also in my mind.

Not only am I hiding my truth from myself and refusing to accept what is in my mind, I am accepting something else instead. I accept all sorts of impossibilities as if they were gospel truth. I accept that I am separate from God, as if that could ever happen. I accept that I am separate from my brothers and from every living thing.

I accept that I am guilty and afraid. I accept the idea that projection will save me from my imagined fears, and that I can save myself by throwing my brothers under the bus. “Here, God, you angry and scary guy, here is someone who is guiltier than me. Take him.” I accept all sorts of insane thoughts into mind. I think I am a body, or at the least, imprisoned in this flesh. I think the body can be affected by something outside my mind. The list of insanity just goes on and on.

What I accept as true is true for me, but only in my dream of being something I am not. The truth remains, and is quite unaffected by my imaginings. In the meantime, since what I believe is true for me, and I believe I suffer, that seems to be true. I think I am suffering. I feel like I am suffering. I believe that this body is real and is me and is afflicted by all sorts of outside forces and so this is the experience I have. I think I get sick and die. I think I lose the ones I love. I think I can be impoverished.

I suffer through my own decisions, and for me, while I suffer it seems of little consequence that it is not really happening. So now that I know suffering is not inevitable, and I am told, not even real, I am motivated to allow the Holy Spirit to heal the only part of me that is sick and needs healing, my mind. I open to the truth by doing my part. I gladly and enthusiastically hand over the false beliefs that are blocking my Self from my awareness. “Holy Spirit, I ask for the Atonement and I accept and receive it. Amen.”

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 1. 6-10-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy
1 The Kingdom is the result of premises, just as this world is. You may have carried the ego’s reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is total confusion about everything. If you really saw this result you could not want it. The only reason you could possibly want any part of it is because you do not see the whole of it. You are willing to look at the ego’s premises, but not at their logical outcome. Is it not possible that you have done the same thing with the premises of God? Your creations are the logical outcome of His premises. His thinking has established them for you. They are exactly where they belong. They belong in your mind as part of your identification with His, but your state of mind and your recognition of what is in it depend on what you believe about your mind. Whatever these beliefs may be, they are the premises that will determine what you accept into your mind.

It has taken me a long time, but I am beginning to see exactly where the ego will lead us if we follow it to its logical conclusion, and it is not a pretty thing. I have been able to hold onto the ego so far because I have looked at it in only bits and pieces. I have tried to keep the parts I value while letting go of the parts that are clearly painful. I have tried to have some ego and some God. I have discovered that this won’t work. I am so confused that I cannot even tell what is valuable and what is not, what is pain and what is pleasure.

I was once married to a paranoid schizophrenic. His condition when full blown was an example of nearly total confusion. He could not tell what was real and what wasn’t. He couldn’t tell friend from foe, and so everyone was an enemy or potential enemy, even those he loved and who loved him. His fear was complete because there was no trust; he could not even trust himself.

After I discovered A Course in Miracles and thought about Charlie, I realized that this is what it is like to be very deeply identified with ego. Charlie was in and out of this state, but never completely free of it. Imagine, though, if the ego premise was carried to its logical conclusion and this was the state that everyone endured, and endured without respite. Imagine what a nightmare life would be.

If the ego’s premise taken to it’s logical conclusion is total confusion, where will God’s premise take us in Its logical conclusion? Would it be crystal clarity? Would it be absolute certainty and complete stability? If God created me through extending Himself, does that mean I am crystal clear, certain, stable? Does it mean I am unlimited and unchanging? If the premise is that I am created by and of God, and that God is good, doesn’t that mean that I am good?

Does it not also follow that I create as God creates? Ideas leave not their source and so I am in the Mind of God, therefore my creations are in my mind. Since I am in the Mind of God, confusion is an illusion because the Mind of God is crystal clear, and being in it, I am crystal clear. The confusion of ego cannot be there or the Mind would not be what It is.

The Mind is eternal and I am in the Mind so I am eternal. The body, which is mortal, must be an illusion. God is Life and so nothing that dies can be in God. I am in God, therefore I cannot die. God is Love and therefore I am Love. There is only God, so there is only Love. There is nothing to oppose because All is One. There is nothing but Love so there is perfect peace.

Because God is only Love, there is no guilt, pain, fear or suffering in the Mind, so these things cannot be real and cannot be in me either. If I think they are, I must be dreaming. To the extent I believe what must logically be true, I will accept only what is God in my mind. If I want something else, I will believe in something else, and that is what I will accept into my mind.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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