Lesson 190:
I choose the joy of God instead of pain...
Yes, joy is the state in which we feel most like our Self, yes? Really, if you take a gander at the rewind tape of your so-called life, you could agree that althought pain, and sometimes intense or long drawn out extended pain, makes one feel 'out-of-sorts', not oneself, feeling you can't really operate normally in your life, until that pain is gone and joy has returned... We were designed for joy, by joy, and we will seek that alignment with our Self, regardless. What if, as the lesson suggests, it is merely a choice.
We are always, ultimately making one choice; to recocognize reality or see illusions, experience joy or pain, Heaven or hell, truth or the false. And which choice we make then becomes the father of our perceptions at any given time... it becomes our teacher and reinforcer of what we want to believe.
Here's the thing: life is thought. It is formulated idea extended. Add a little belief to a fantasy which fosters the opposite to truth and all manner of its evidence will seem to reinforce it (sending the sentinals of darkness, as it says in the text). The Course continually reminds us that ideas leave not their source. We are the idea of God's joy extended as creation. We are as God created us; we are awake to this one truth or we sleep. The form illusions dreaming is irrelevent, actually. Even in our so-called physical dreaming-life, when we are afraid, in pain, out of touch with joy and love, we employ our faculties to get us out of the situation. The problem lies with the belief that we are really in that dream reality.
I remember when it hit me like a ton of bricks~ this idea that joy was my only natural state... I had been meditating and contemplating my day and God's Will for me, and that sense that 'all is well and I would be guided' seemed to elude me. I began to contemplate what the circumstances of my mind were when I felt sure that I could hear the Voice for God, and when, like that morning, it seemed out of my reach. As the observer of my mind, I could see that I was feeling frustrated and I was seeking answers to my problems, (sort of like Holy Spirit was my errand-boy instead of my teacher, interpreter and guide). At that moment of realization of the error in my thinking, my mood went from one of frustration-pain, to one of joy and excitement... Instantly, I felt tuned in, available to recieve a transmission consistant with the really solution I sought, which was the return to joy-love. I realized I could not serve two masters. It was all or nothing.
There is no compromise in this. I choose the joy of God or I choose pain... and everything I experience will reflect the choice I make. The groovy part is, that the way I feel is always a berometer to forgive the false, and choose once again.
Now, I allow my natural state of joy to take me into my meditative state instead of hoping to extract joy from meditation. I am as God created me and I am joyously waiting in quiet expectation to know my Father's Will... and only this, for this is the only thing that truly brings joy to His creations... This is my purpose here; to be joy instead of pain in every seeming circumstance, being the balm that restores our natural state of joy, that we may begin to see clearly...
Let us together, today, choose the joy of God instead of pain...