Choose Joy

Photo credit: Arthur Lau-Sed

ACIM Central Theme: “I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.”

Review: #190 “I choose the joy of God instead of pain.”

Today I had a conversation with a long-time friend. She is feeling extreme emotional pain. I love her dearly and want to hold her close and hug the pain away. But that is impossible. I would love it if I could take today’s workbook lesson and inject her with a heavy dose of its wisdom, but that is impossible. I can’t choose for her, I can’t change her mind, I can’t do anything but speak Truth to error. I can’t force her to listen, but I can love her. I love her enough that I don’t want to hurt her with telling her what I see to be her “problem”, and so I will choose joy rather than pain when I think of my dear friend. We can all see the best of ourselves, along with our loved ones, and the world.

Mary Baker Eddy quote:

“As vapor melts before the sun, so evil would vanish before the reality of good. One must hide the other. How important, then, to choose good as the reality!”

Science & Health Page 480:31-2

July 9, 2012 - I have a choice!

"Somewhere in Italy during World Cup 2006"
photo by Aaron Springston

A Course in Miracles Lesson #190

“I choose the joy of God instead of pain.”

The idea that we have a choice between joy and pain may not be easy to accept. It could seem that if this is so, then any pain we are suffering is our own fault. But let's not allow mortal mind, ego, to lay a guilt trip on us! If it's true that we have a choice in what we accept as reality, then it might seem we're bringing illness and pain to our existence, and so we must be doing something wrong. The only thing we are guilty of is a mistaken perception, and for that there is immediate remedy: Change your thought! "Phantom pain" attests the cause of pain to originate and live in our mind. If the empty space where there was a limb can continue to ache, obviously the cause of that pain was not originating in the limb itself, but in our mortal mind. A change of that mind's idea to the understanding that we are truly Mind's, God's idea, brings us through the material illusion into the spiritual Truth of our being. So we find that nothing can make us sad or ill or miserable in any way, only us through our acceptance or rejection of what we believe to be true. The world has no power to cause anything, but we have been living as though it does. We have been taught that we are the helpless victims of life's circumstances, and it can come as quite a shock to find out this is not true. Our holiness can only be hidden by us. When we awaken to the joy which is ours as the children of God, these things we like to think of as miracles show themselves to be the normal, everyday occurrences of our Life.

Mary Baker Eddy quote:

[Please note that in this quote the capitalized Mind, Truth, Life denote God]

“The divine metaphysics of Christian Science, like the method in mathematics, proves the rule by inversion. For example: There is no pain in Truth, and no truth in pain; no nerve in Mind, and no mind in nerve; no matter in Mind, and no mind in matter; no matter in Life, and no life in matter; no matter in good, and no good in matter.”

Science & Health Page 113:26-32