 We continue with Chapter 7, 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 will 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 sighs 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 and motivation, it can only be due to projection. Projection is a confusion and 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 is 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. If the results of this decision is confusing, this is hardly surprising. 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. And from the workbook, Lesson 54. These are the review ideas for today. I have no neutral thoughts. Neutral thoughts are impossible because all thoughts have power. They will either make a false world or lead me to the real one. But thoughts cannot be without effects. As the world I see arises from my thinking errors, so will the real world rise before my eyes as I let my errors be corrected. My thoughts cannot be neither true nor false. They must be one or the other. What I see shows me which they are. I see no neutral things. What I see witnesses to what I think. If I did not think I would not exist, because life is thought. Let me look on the world I see as a representation of my own state of mind. I know that my state of mind can change. And so I also know the world I see can change as well. I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing. If I have no private thoughts, I cannot see a private world. Even the mad idea of separation had to be shared before it could form the basis of the world I see. Yet that sharing was a sharing of nothing. I can also call upon my real thoughts which share everything with everyone. As my thoughts of separation call to the separation thoughts of others, so my real thoughts awaken the real thoughts in them. And the world my real thoughts show me will dawn on their sight as well as mine. I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts. I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do teaches all the universe. A son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain. He cannot be alone in anything. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine. For mine is the power of God. I am determined to see. Recognizing the shared nature of my thoughts I am determined to see. I would look upon the witnesses that show me the thinking of the world has been changed. I would behold the proof that what has been done through me has enabled love to replace fear, laughter to replace tears, and abundance to replace loss. I would look upon the real world and let it teach me that my will and the will of God are one. So, as we sink inward today, we begin to see the nature of the mind and the all or nothing nature of thought. The thoughts of God, the thoughts I think with God, are all. And any thought that I attempt to think apart from God, against God, different from God's thoughts, are nothing. And I have no neutral thoughts. The thoughts that I think I think either make a false world or lead me to the real one. But thoughts cannot be without effects. And I don't see anything this world is neutral because I have no neutral thoughts. It's all connected. Everything is mind. And that is why I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing. There is no such thing as private thoughts. And I cannot see a private world. The ego would show me a private world based on private thoughts. But these thoughts have no validity, no reality. I cannot think apart from God. Therefore, I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts. And this is why I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do teaches all the universe. The Son of God cannot be alone in anything. There is only one mind. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine. For mind is the power of God. And I accept the Atonement for myself. I accept the Atonement for everyone and everything. Because there is nothing outside of mind. And the vision of Christ is the only seeing that there is. Perception is not seeing at all. I would look upon the witnesses that show me the thinking of the world has been changed. As I change my mind, the entire world looks different. As I accept the vision of Christ, I can see. No longer will I confuse pain and joy. Pain is the outcome of the ego. Joy is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They have no meeting point. They do not exist together. When I allow this confusion to be released, heaven is the only thing that I can experience. It is the Holy Spirit's main function to teach me how to tell them apart. The confusion between pain and joy is the cause of the whole idea of sacrifice. Yet if I obey the Holy Spirit, I will be giving up the ego and sacrificing nothing. I will instead be gaining everything. This is my choice. I will accept that I do not need to decide anything. I only need to accept the will of God and to accept that God's will is my will. There is nothing else.