Pleasure equals pain:

I want to share this mail our beloved David wrote to Kate,

Lucia/kira

Hope I make it to Scotland someday to see you.

Awakening indeed involves transcending the desire for pleasure.

Here is an excerpt from a teaching session in Nez Zealand:

This was transcribed from one of my talks recorded on You
Tube. Enjoy!

Pleasure equals pain:

"One of the ego's biggest tricks it does not want you to know about.
Because if you know about this trick and you raise it into awareness
then you no longer fall for it. That is a fast way to wake up to
divine love - not falling for tricks. This trick is a game or a
scheme. Now if this world were only pain and suffering and hurt and
tradgedy, wouldn't it be easy to drop? Yes it would. If everything
burned, you could drop it like a hot potato and boom, its back to the
Kingdom of Heaven and Nirvana. But the ego disguises itself, and as
everyone knows in this world, there are alot of things that seem to
be very attractive. It's Like fool's gold, and that's what makes it
very sneaky. That's the trick. If you could see it, you would drop
it in an instant. But the ego uses the duality of pain and pleasure.
In fact, in this world they seem to be very, very different. In this
world there are whole philosophies built around the idea that we
should maximize the pleasure and minimize the pain. And the ego is
never going to tell you one thing: They are the same. They are
identical. Pleasure and Pain are identical.

Now on the surface when you first start to look at this, Jesus talks
about this in ACIM, its a big trick. It takes a lot of faith to say,
okay, I'm listening, how are you going to explain this one to me. It
sounds pretty profound but it doesn't feel that way. Everyone who
has experienced the pleasures and the pains will say, 'I think I can
tell the difference between pleasure and pain.' He says, no you
can't. You are in such a state of mind in this world that you are so
confused that you can't even tell the difference between pain and
joy. That's pretty confused. In fact, he says that pleasure is part
of a flip side, the trick from the ego, that is actually called the
attraction to guilt. In other words the ego can make the guilt so
attractive that you keep going for it. You keep grabbing for it, over
and over. In linear time you keep falling for the trick. You keep
getting stuck in its game, and that's what the ego wants you to do.
It wants you to get stuck in its universe.

So, I use the example of Marilyn Monroe (gorgeous in terms of body,
sex appeal, fame, money, famous husbands, ... she even had the
president of the U.S. lusting after her - John F. Kennedy). Now
from the world's perspective she had everything. But she was
depressed, suicidal. Years later Elton John would write a song about
her (Candle In The Wind) about how sad and lonely this woman actually
was. This is a very good example of the ego's teachings in the mind.
You will come to a place that you will think, kinda like pinochio,
going to pleasure island, 'I don't have to go to school, I don't have
to be responsible for anything, I can have fun all day with all the
other boys on pleasure island.' And what happens? It turns into a
really horrific experience. This is a little parable for the whole
human race.

Now on the surface of things we could look at this metaphysically and
say, 'how is this working?' How did the ego devise this sneaky trick
to keep us all feeling guilty and stuck on planet earth or in time
and space and keep us forgetting what our eternal reality is. That
the world was made as a distraction. Remember I said that in
separation there were these two thought systems, fear and love. It
was an intolerable conflict to try to believe in both, to try to hold
both fear and love in the mind. So the world, the cosmos, was an
attempt to throw the guilt, the conflict out into time and space to
relieve the tension. So instead of feeling this terrible feeling
of 'oh my God i've done a terrible thing, i've separated from God,
i've ripped my mind away from God' which is a horrific idea, the ego
made up time and space as a way to dilute it (so it's not so horrific
as one terrible instant). 'Let's spread it out over a millenium.
Little tiny bits of pains and pleasures over millions and millions of
years.' Almost like (for example) if someone took a tiny drop of
poison they were going to give you (we are talking really potent
poison) and they said 'I'm going to give you a drop of this poison,
and you must drink of this poison, that is the only condition. Now
you can decide how you want to take it, but you've got to take it.'
You could say, 'okay, put the drop....in the ocean over there, and
i'll take a drink of the ocean.' You see how it would kind of dilute
it a little bit? That is what the ego tried to do, it tried to make
up a world of time and space so it could dilute the guilt of
believing that the separation from God was possible so you would be
stuck in this little human body and seemingly dealing with this for
lifetimes, and meanwhile the ego never tells you the secret - that
pain and pleasure are the same illusion. In fact jesus says why they
are the same: they both reinforce the reality of the body as your
identity, because they are dualistic.

Now Joy, or Love, or Peace: these are natural States of Mind that
don't have anything to do with the pains or pleasures of this world.
That is your natural inheritance that has been covered over by all of
this dualism. So I have to say that in my life when people think
about going on the spiritual journey, one of the things that scares
people the most (you've heard about the lives of the mystics and
saints, saint john of the cross and the dark nite of the soul
and starving and fasting and penance and all this stuff) is that it
doesn't sound very attractive. It's much easier to just have a life
that seems to have a mixture of things. But what I am saying is that
when you go into working miracles, which is what A Course In Miracles
is about, it gets you in touch with your Purpose, which is the joy.
And that has to take over to the point that you are not going to fall
into the tricks of pain/pleasure, pain/pleasure. ..which is purely
seeking for a satisfaction, which is,... what can we say about pain
and pleasure? One thing we can say is that they are temporary, they
come in little bits and pieces and there is no lasting satisfaction
(ie. when you have a particular food, or a particular sexual
encounter, or you see a particular experience in the climate or the
world or whatever). It's very transitory, and then the ego
says, 'okay, now you've got to go back for it again ...go again and
again and again.' And all of us know that it just doesn't satisfy
you. You end up feeling like there's got to be more. Like the old
Peggy Lee song (Is That All There Is?). Everybody in this world
sings that tune at some point."

Love from Toulon France,

David