Simple ACIM
Original Edition
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v1.0 · Course text used under CIMS license
Workbook for Students
Contents
Opening
Introduction
Wb.In
Part I
Lessons 1 - 50
50 lessons
Part I
Review I [51 - 60]
10 lessons
Part I
Lessons 61 - 80
20 lessons
Part I
Review II [81 - 90]
10 lessons
Part I
Lessons 91 - 110
20 lessons
Part I
Review III [111 - 120]
10 lessons
Part I
Lessons 121 - 140
20 lessons
Part I
Review IV [141 - 150]
10 lessons
Part I
Lessons 151 - 170
20 lessons
Part I
Review V [171 - 180]
10 lessons
Part I
Lessons 181 - 200
20 lessons
Introduction
Wb.181-200.In
181.I trust my brothers, who are one with me.
Wb.181
182.I will be still a moment and go home.
Wb.182
183.I call upon God's Name and on my own.
Wb.183
184.The Name of God is my inheritance.
Wb.184
185.I want the peace of God.
Wb.185
186.Salvation of the world depends on me.
Wb.186
187.I bless the world because I bless myself.
Wb.187
188.The peace of God is shining in me now.
Wb.188
189.I feel the Love of God within me now.
Wb.189
190.I choose the joy of God instead of pain.
Wb.190
191.I am the holy Son of God Himself.
Wb.191
192.I have a function God would have me fill.
Wb.192
193.All things are lessons God would have me learn.
Wb.193
194.I place the future in the hands of God.
Wb.194
195.Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
Wb.195
196.It can be but myself I crucify.
Wb.196
197.It can be but my gratitude I earn.
Wb.197
198.Only my condemnation injures me.
Wb.198
199.I am not a body. I am free.
Wb.199
200.There is no peace except the peace of God.
Wb.200
Part I
Review VI [201 - 220]
20 lessons
Part II
Introduction
Wb.pII.In
Part II
Lessons 221 - 230
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 231 - 240
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 241 - 250
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 251 - 260
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 261 - 270
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 271 - 280
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 281 - 290
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 291 - 300
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 301 - 310
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 311 - 320
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 321 - 330
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 331 - 340
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 341 - 350
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 351 - 360
10 lessons
Part II
Lessons 361 - 365
5 lessons
Closing
Epilogue
Wb.Ep
Back
Part I · Lesson 190
I choose the joy of God instead of pain.
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1Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes which will not disappear if seen aright. For pain proclaims God cruel. How could it be real in any form? It witnesses to God the Father's hatred of His Son, the sinfulness He sees in him, and His insane desire for revenge and death. Can such projections be attested to? Can they be anything but wholly false?
2Pain is but witness to the Son's mistakes in what he thinks he is. It is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed, for attack on what is wholly unassailable. It is a nightmare of abandonment by an eternal Love which could not leave the Son whom it created out of love.
3Pain is a sign illusions reign in place of truth. It demonstrates God is denied, confused with fear, perceived as mad, and seen as traitor to Himself. If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real, there is no God. For vengeance is not part of love. And fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain.
4Peace to such foolishness! The time has come to laugh at such insane ideas. There is no need to think of them as savage crimes or secret sins with weighty consequence. Who but a madman could conceive of them as cause of anything? Their 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.
5It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness.
6My holy brothers, think of this awhile—the world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. It merely represents your thoughts. And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind and choose the joy of God as what you really want. Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging, and unchangeable forever and forever. And 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?
7The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects. As an illusion it is what you will. Your idle wishes represent its pains. Your strange desires bring it evil dreams. Your thoughts of death envelop it in fear, while in your kind forgiveness does it live.
8Pain is the thought of evil taking form and working havoc in your holy mind. Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free. In pain is God denied the Son He loves. In pain does fear appear to triumph over love and time replace eternity and Heaven. And 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.
9Lay down your arms and come without defense into the quiet place where Heaven's peace holds all things still at last. Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear. Let no attack enter with you. Lay 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. Here will you understand there is no pain. Here does the joy of God belong to you.
10This is the day when it is given you to realize the lesson which contains all of salvation's power. It is this: pain is illusion; joy reality. Pain is but sleep; joy is awakening. Pain is deception; joy alone is truth.
11And 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. Let 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.