The Confusion of Pain and Joy

Chapter 7.10
 
The Confusion of Pain and Joy
 
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 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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.