My colleague and longtime friend, Corinne Zupko, wrote a wise and comforting article about whether God teaches us lessons through pain, which I consider a classic. Please enjoy …

Popular Phrases that Mask Our Fear of Love … Reinterpreted!

This quote from “A Course in Miracles” (ACIM) has always brought me a lot of comfort:

“Discomfort is aroused only to bring the need for correction into awareness.” FIP T-2.V.7

It helped me see a purpose to my overwhelming feelings of anxiety… anxiety was there as a “red flag” that I needed correction.

But I also misunderstood this ACIM quote for years. I thought that the Holy Spirit, or God (Love) was arousing discomfort in me to get me to see that I needed correction. I was SO wrong! Spirit NEVER causes pain. Instead, discomfort is automatically aroused in me BECA– USE I am misperceiving. Discomfort HAS to arise if I am distorting truth because I am perceiving myself as I am NOT. Discomfort HAS to show up if I am listening to the ego. It HAS to show up if I think I’m a body. Therefore, discomfort is a great “red flag” reminder I need to “choose again.” Once I recognize that the discomfort is there, all I have to do is to be willing to take my perception to Spirit in exchange for the miracle.

It is essential that we be willing to uncover and to let go of all forms of the thought that God or Spirit causes us pain or would teach us “lessons.” Otherwise our unconscious fear of God’s Love will remain in place and we will keep siding with the ego. We must be willing to look (WITH Spirit) at all of the areas where we still believe that God “does things to us.”

There are so many sayings that reflect our belief that God teaches us lessons and that God could therefore cause us pain. Here are some examples:

“God gives you only what you can handle.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“God comforts the disturbed, and disturbs the comfortable.”
Through the ego, these sayings mean this:

“God gives you only what you can handle” = Whatever terrible things come your way, God is responsible for, but he’ll back off when it gets to be too intense for you.
“Everything happens for a reason” = Things sucks right now, but God has a reason for doing it to you which might be revealed to you at some point in the future if you’re lucky.
“God comforts the disturbed, and disturbs the comfortable” – Basically, you’re only “safe” from God disturbing you if you’re suffering. After all, if God “disturbs the comfortable,” why would any of us want to be truly comfortable? This quote implies that it is safer to stay disturbed so God will leave us alone.

Although these sayings actually used to give me comfort, I see now how they were actually keeping my fear of God’s Love in place (I always thought I believed that God is loving, but these deeply held ideas said otherwise).

Through Spirit, we can look at these sayings in a new way:

“God gives you only what you can handle” = God isn’t “doing” anything to you. It is simply the ego’s script playing itself out, which is calling forth witnesses for fear. What God gives you is an Inner Teacher (the Holy Spirit) who will look past ALL painful appearances to the truth beyond, IF YOU WILL bring what you see/feel to it. Being willing to turn to the Holy Spirit means that you CAN handle anything because are willing to be shown the Truth behind the form (which is always that you are not a body and ARE LOVE).

“Everything happens for a reason” = Everything that happens is coming from the ego’s script. And the divine purpose of anything that happens is that it is simply an opportunity to choose for the Holy Spirit instead of strengthening the ego. That is the only truly sane reason behind anything.

“God comforts the disturbed, and disturbs the comfortable” = God will NEVER disturb you or cause you pain. Pain does not exist in God and therefore does not exist in you (the TRUE you). Only the ego gets satisfaction out of disturbing you because it would prefer to keep your attention on the body (the UNtrue you), and away from the Love that you ARE (the TRUE you).

While we still hold any scraps of fear God’s Love in our mind, we’re going to even misunderstand A Course in Miracles. For instance, at face value, this lesson sounds like God does teach us lessons:

“All things are lessons God would have me learn”

If we misinterpret this and read this sentence through the ego, we could easily think that sickness, disasters, lack, suffering come from God to teach us a lesson. This is UNTRUE. Spirit does NOT cause you pain. The lesson we can learn in ANY circumstance is that Spirit is ALWAYS there for us to choose for. There is ALWAYS another way, through Spirit, to see a painful circumstance. All things that happen are an opportunity for us to turn more deeply to Spirit than we ever thought we could. That is the lesson that God would have us learn: That we are God’s One Son and have never left our Home. Spirit is ALWAYS here.

“All things are lessons God would have you learn. He would not leave an unforgiving thought without correction, nor one thorn or nail to hurt His sacred Son in any way. He would ensure his holy rest remain untroubled and serene, without a care in an eternal home which cares for him. And He would have all tears be wiped away, with none remaining yet unshed, and none but waiting their appointed time to fall. For God has willed that laughter should replace each one, and that His Son be free again.” – ACIM Sparkle edition page 365

Can you think of other popular phrases that mask our fear of Love? Did you experience an insight reading this post? If so, please email me at [email protected]. And be sure to check out more of Corinne’s work at https://fromanxietytolove.com.  If you’d like, read this post at her website. It was originally published on February 5, 2014: https://fromanxietytolove.com/popular-phrases-that-mask-our-fear-of-love-reinterpreted/