LESSON 190 I choose the joy of God instead of pain.

1. 1Pain is a wrong perspective. 2When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. 3It is not a fact at all. 4There is no form it takes that will not disappear if seen aright. 5For pain proclaims God cruel. 6How could it be real in any form? 7It witnesses to God the Father’s hatred of His Son, the sinfulness He sees in him, and His insane desire for revenge and death.

2. 1Can such projections be attested to? 2Can they be anything but wholly false? 3Pain is but witness to the Son’s mistakes in what he thinks he is. 4It is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed; for attack on what is wholly unassail­able. 5It is a nightmare of abandonment by an Eternal Love, which could not leave the Son whom It created out of love.

3. 1Pain is a sign illusions reign in place of truth. 2It demonstrates God is denied, confused with fear, perceived as mad, and seen as traitor to Himself. 3If God is real, there is no pain. 4If pain is real, there is no God. 5For vengeance is not part of love. 6And fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. 7The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain.

4. 1Peace to such foolishness! 2The time has come to laugh at such insane ideas. 3There is no need to think of them as savage crimes, or secret sins with weighty consequence. 4Who but a madman could conceive of them as cause of anything? 5Their 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.

5. 1It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. 2Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. 3There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. 4No one but yourself affects you. 5There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. 6But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. 7As you perceive the harm­lessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. 8And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness.

6. 1My holy brother, think of this awhile: The world you see does nothing. 2It has no effects at all. 3It merely represents your thoughts. 4And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind, and choose the joy of God as what you really want. 5Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable, forever and forever. 6And 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?

7. 1The world may seem to cause you pain. 2And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. 3As an effect, it cannot make effects. 4As an illusion, it is what you wish. 5Your idle wishes represent its pains. 6Your strange desires bring it evil dreams. 7Your thoughts of death envelop it in fear, while in your kind forgiveness does it live.

8. 1Pain is the thought of evil taking form, and working havoc in your holy mind. 2Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free. 3In pain is God denied the Son He loves. 4In pain does fear appear to triumph over love, and time replace eternity and Heaven. 5And 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.

9. 1Lay down your arms, and come without defense into the quiet place where Heaven’s peace holds all things still at last. 2Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear. 3Let no attack enter with you. 4Lay 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.

10. 1Here will you understand there is no pain. 2Here does the joy of God belong to you. 3This is the day when it is given you to realize the lesson that contains all of salvation’s power. 4It is this: Pain is illusion; joy, reality. 5Pain is but sleep; joy is awakening. 6Pain is deception; joy alone is truth.

11. 1And 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. 2Let 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.