The Voice For God

by Jon Mundy, Ph.D.

 

If you cannot hear the Voice for God,

it is because you do not choose to listen.

That you “do” listen to the voice of your ego is demonstrated

 by your attitudes, your feelings and your behavior.

T-4.IV.1:1-2

 

The Call to Remember

It is my intention to convince you (in case you’re not already convinced) that for everyone there is an inner guide, an intelligent principle, an inner   genius, an indwelling spirit, a little spark, a counselor, comforter, healer, mediator, and teacher. Deep down inside there is a “You” that is very wise, who knows your every need and can answer your deepest heart’s desire. This teacher tells us exactly the right decision we need to make in each and every instance. Why don’t we pay attention?

 

Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God?

You will accept only whom you invite.

T-11.VII.7:1-2

 

Awareness of the role of what we call “The Holy Spirit,” is very important in experiencing miracles.

 

All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life.

His Voice will direct you very specifically.

You will be told all you need to know.

The Fourth Principle of A Course in Miracles, T-1.I.4.

 

Read the directions and directly

you will be directed in the right direction.

Lewis, Carroll’s The Doorknob in Alice in Wonderland

 

The Tiny Mad Idea

The Holy Spirit (the Voice for God) was placed in every mind at the very moment our minds split off from the Mind of God. In this sense no one has ever or could ever leave God because God cannot leave us. The Voice for God is thus, the reminder for everyone. It is here to help us find our way home. The splitting off of the mind is understood mythologically as what happened in the Garden of Eden. At some point man, woman, you, me, us, “We” decided it was possible to think a thought outside of the mind of God – which is not possible. For just a moment, we thought the impossible possible; and thus, was born an illusory dream-like world and the mind, rather than being in its natural state as host to God, became instead hostage to the ego.

 

Into eternity, where all is one,

There crept a tiny, mad idea,

At which the Son of God remembered not to laugh.

T-27.VIII.87.6:2

 

         It’s not the “tiny mad idea” that keeps us from hearing the Voice for God. What keeps us from hearing is that we (the chooser) took the tiny mad idea seriously and we forgot to laugh at the preposterous thought that it is possible to hear a voice which is not part of God. Everyone hears an inner voice and all the time. Something talks to us inside our heads. The question is which inner voice do I choose to listen to? There are only two possibilities, God or the ego. The ego voice is persistent in the thoughts of “me” and “mine.” In Judaism it is sometimes called having “a yenta in one’s cap.” A yenta is a blabber mouth or gossip monger. The thing which seems to keep us asleep is dreaming itself. Thus, “awakening” means “remembering” what already is and a leaving off of what never was.

 

God and the Ego Cannot Be Defined

God cannot be defined as God is beyond all words, all symbols and all form. The ego, likewise, cannot be defined since we cannot define what does not exist. According to the Course, the ego is not reality at all. A name for namelessness is all it is. (C-2.1:7). However, because this illusion (ego) looks like it exists, and because this illusion is the thing which “blocks” our view (awareness) of Love (God’s presence), we’ll need a “working” definition of the ego to help us better understand “the illusion,” “the dream” we struggle to awaken from.

 

What is the ego?

Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something.

C-2.2:1-2

 

The ego is that that which defines, interprets, projects, judges, and analyses. It is that which is always making up the world. I am always making up the world. You are always making up the world. We are always making up the world. Ego is identification with form. When I identify with form, I lose my identification with Oneness. A synonym for ego is fear and a synonym for Spirit is love. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can’t have an opposite. Therefore again, the ego does not exist. Falling into the experience of fear, and listening to “the tiny mad idea” (belief in separation) and the chatter of the ego, it all seems very real. When we are full of Love, there is no ego (fear).

 

The ego lives in a world of dreams which appears in countless forms. The thought which came into Adam’s mind – your mind and my mind, was that it was possible to listen to a voice (our own ego voice) – independent of the Voice of God. It seems like there are two parts to each of us. Let’s be honest and admit that for most of us, for most of our lives, we’ve been more interested in the ego than anything else. Let’s admit it – we’re all “ego-aholics.” Hostage to the ego, addicted to an illusion, it’s easy to be absorbed by the world. As the outside world seems so big, so distracting and often dangerous, inner life is easily neglected and sometimes almost but never completely forgotten.

 

. . . the ego's qualifications as a guide are singularly unfortunate,

and it is a remarkably poor choice as a teacher of salvation.

Anyone who elects a totally insane guide must be totally insane himself. Nor is it true that you do not realize the guide is insane.

You realize it because I realize it,

and you have judged it by the same standard I have.

T-9.IV.8:3-6

 

The Function of the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is an idea, a means or the instrument of miracles and the great correction principle. It functions in the mind that lives far beyond a brain. The function of the Holy Spirit is to identify error (the world) and judge it correctly – that is as false or unreal. The undoing of fear is essential in understanding the value of miracles. The heart of the Course is thus, the removal of the blocks to awareness of loves presence. In the presence of light, darkness disappears. Interestingly, many people at the moment of death and freedom from the illusion of the body, report the presence of a comforting light. We are engaged in a journey of remembrance, a journey without distance to a home we never left. For this reason, dying is a bit like waking up. It does not mean enlightenment. There comes, however, one very clear realization: You are not a body. You are not a dream.

 

The Inner Teacher

Remember Star Wars, Luke Skywalker, and his guide Obi-Wan-Kenobi. It’s a mythological way of thinking about connecting with inner guidance. Connecting with the inner teacher is a little bit like this, only the inner teacher exists only in the mind because only the mind is real (T-6.V.A.3:2). Minds can share. The body is separate. It is not part of us. It is not good. It is not bad. It has nothing to do with who we are. Though there are symbols for the Holy Spirit, like a dove – Spirit (Mind) (Love) has no form. Life occurs at the level of the mind. We live love and fear at the level of the mind.

 

That which is ultimately true is true for all time, always and without exception. Every time the word ultimately appears in the Course, what follow is true as in, ultimately, space is as meaningless as time (T-1.VI.3:5). Both are beliefs. Ultimately, reincarnation is impossible (M-24.1;1); or, ultimately the Holy Spirit translates perception into knowledge (T-6.V.A.5:1); Ultimately, there is only One Mind, or One-mindedness, after Adam’s fall (the separation) Mind appeared to split into two minds.

 

1.) The Mind of God, the right-mind; filled only with love; and,

2.) The mind as an agent of choice, the wrong-mind; filled only with fear.

 

I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think.

Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!

Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland

 

         Who is the Decider and Who Wants to Know?

         The most interesting question is who is the decider, the determiner, the chooser of the world we see? Becoming hostage to the ego, believing we are separated from God is wrong-mindedness insanity, or unreasonableness. We, therefore, seek to return to right-mindedness, sanity, or reasonableness. Between the wrong-mind and the right-mind there stands a character we’ll call “Charlie the Chooser.” In each and every instant of each and every day – who is it that “decides” between these two points of view? Cause (mind), “the decider” is the important thing. Cause comes before effect. Ultimately, God is the cause and we are the effect. Our minds can and ultimately will be returned to One-mindedness. In fact, it’s already done. The atonement has been completed. We only dream that it has not.

 

One-mindedness is a state in which there is no separation, confusion, and nothing to fear. The mind is not in the body. The body is in the mind. The mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind. Obviously, therefore, the mind is the stronger thing (T-6.V.A.2:6). According to the gospel writers, after each of the healings of Jesus, Jesus says, “Your faith has made you whole.” Mind is the thing behind the miracle. The mind cannot be seen with the body’s eyes. You cannot touch it or smell it, but metaphorically speaking, it is possible to “feel it;”  “hear it;” “see it;” and thus, “know” it. When we talk to ourselves inside our heads, it’s not an external voice we hear. In the same way, The Voice for God is not external to us. It comes from deep within. The Voice for God helps us get things right-side up because we’ve gotten it all upside-down (W-238.1:2).

 

The ego mind is a dream. It’s been going on this way for so long, for so many people, most folks do not see the dream. Yet, some haunting memory of Home remains. There is something there that says, “This is not quite it. I am not yet fully awake. I am not yet filled with light. Choice is everything. We habitually play the collective consensus reality game, the “collusion of illusion” game – without seeing it.

 

We are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things,

and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself. 

From The Dream Game by the Swiss Renaissance

Physician and Alchemist Paracelsus (1493-1541)

 

Steps in Listening to Inner Guidance

We begin listening to inner guidance by removing the blocks to the awareness of Love’s presence. We cannot remove the blocks until we                   experience the ego (fear) and decide that we no longer want this experience. I simply look at the ego without judgment and realize that it is an illusion. It is not something to be scared of. It is not something to be fought against. To fight against it, would make it look real. Looking (dropping projection) and accepting what is – is the heart of forgiveness. Fear builds the world as a prison. Forgiveness (love) sets all of its prisoners free (W-332).

 

Ultimately everyone must remember the Will of God,

because ultimately everyone must recognize himself.

T-9.I.9:1 (bold mine)

 

When Helen Schucman began to hear the Course, she thought that she might be going crazy. After all, “it really was happening.” Strangely, the Voice was making incredible sense, far more sense than anything that might have come from her ego. I attended Helen’s funeral in February 1981. Dr. Ken Wapnick, who gave the eulogy, spent much of that time talking about Helen’s devotion to God – a strange eulogy for an atheist. Helen like all of us fought against God. And yet despite all of her resistance – what did Helen hear?

 

To think you can oppose the Will of God is a real delusion.

The ego believes that it can, and that it can offer you its own "will"

as a gift. “You do not want it.” It is not a gift. It is nothing at all.

God has given you a gift that you both “have” and “are.”

T-7.IV.6:1-6 (bold mine)

 

The inner teacher calls us to remember who we “already are.” Love is   always already here – always has been and will be. Helen, who knew, loved, and scribed the Course, resisted the Course; and yet, she wrote down precisely what she was asked to write. She did her part. She brought this incredible book to the world. What does this book tell us? It tells us that we too can hear the Voice for God. All we have to do is to ask the Holy Spirit to help us remove the blocks to the awareness of Love’s presence.

 

For the past several hundreds of thousands or millions of years, or more depending on how you view historical time, several billion of us have been listening to a crazy voice that tells us preposterous things. It tells us that we are lost, broken, and separated from the Love of God. It tells us that we are weak and frail and limited to bodies that are going to suffer, die, be burned into ash, or buried in the ground and that is all there is to it. But that is not all there is to it! The memory of God lingers in every mind. It won’t go away. It cannot go away because it is in fact a “present memory.” It never went away and it is always available.

 

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward.

Lewis Carroll’s, The Queen in Alice in Wonderland

 

God cannot leave Heaven. Where is Heaven? “Neither will they say, ‘Lo here!’ nor, ‘Lo there!’ for, the Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) The word “within” is unnecessary. The Kingdom of Heaven “is” you (T-4.III.1-4). Seeing only the outside and fascinated with form, knowledge of the Kingdom rests deep within, ready to be reawakened. For this reason we seek to “restore the memory of God to the mind.”

 

         Ideas are of the mind.  What is projected out,

 and seems to be external to the mind, is not outside at all,

but an effect of what is in, and has not left its source.

T-26.VII.4:7-9

 

The first step in awakening is “remembering” that we have a mind – that can remember.” We are called upon to give our (ego’s) mind to God but we must give our whole minds and without reservations. Only thus do we remember that the separation never occurred. Though repressed and kept in darkness, underneath it we all know God is the core of Being. When God is chosen, an illusion is lost, the outer world disappears, sanity returns,                reasonableness comes into the mind, and the Kingdom of Heaven is restored.

 

Listen, -- perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not quite forgotten;

dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar,

like a song whose name is long forgotten, and the circumstances

in which you heard completely unremembered.

T-21.I.6:1

 

We have all been in touch with our inner teacher.

When was the last time you heard the Voice?

 

Windows and Doors – Moments of Remembering

Were you a child and somewhat more innocent than you are now, and more interested in fantasy, fairytales, stories, and other mysterious things that you no longer admit into consciousness? Were all sorts of things possible that are no longer possible? Were dolls alive! Did they have souls? Did fairies   exist? Were angels an easy possibility? Were there all sorts of other worlds, the world of the ants, and the world of the leprechauns, worlds under the sea, and in outer space? Where you able to talk to God?

 

Perhaps you were reading something and one line stood out with such impeccable, immaculate, and irreproachable truth; you knew it to be true. Maybe you experienced a moment of great synchronicity, some moment when a coincidence of events merged together in such a meaningfully way you could not ignore it. Maybe you experience a moment of great revelation. Maybe at that moment just the right information was given to you.

 

Perhaps a message came your way in a dream. Perhaps it was an intuition, or gut feeling.

It might have come when you were standing looking at a field, a sunrise, or sunset. Maybe you were just staring at a parking lot or some buildings, or maybe just looking at the floor.

 

Maybe you heard the Voice during a walk, while driving, “the twenty-first century mode of meditation,” while fishing or bicycling, or maybe you were just very relaxed.

 

Tempests, Storms, and Friends – Being Shaken Awake

It might have happened because your old methodologies no longer worked; you got caught in a lie or with your hand in the till – and you knew – you had to be responsible – you could no longer live such a separated life.

 

It might have come because you are not very good at paying attention, and you got hit so hard in the chest by that heart attack or that doctor’s diagnosis, that bankruptcy, that divorce that you had to pay attention. Many people awaken in hospice program as they begin to “let go” of all the forms of  identification. We must all let go of “things,” “ambitions,” “the future,” and finally, “the body” itself. As we let go of the unessential that which is real comes to the fore.

 

It might have come in the voice of a friend, teacher, or therapist who told you something you very much needed but maybe you did not want to hear.

 

The message your brother gives you is up to you.

What does he say to you? What would you have him say?

Your decision about him determines the message you receive.

Remember that the Holy Spirit is in him,

and His Voice speaks to you through him.

T-9.II.5:1-5

 

It is interesting that some of the folks we regard as our greatest contemporary spiritual teachers woke up after hitting bottom.

 

Bill Wilson (1895-1971, US) the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, lying in bed depressed and despairing cried out, “I’ll do anything, anything at all! If there be a God, let Him show Himself!” A feeling of ecstasy came over him and he never drank again.

Byron Katie (1942-present, US) woke up on the cement floor of an Arizona halfway house for women with eating disorders.

Neale Donald Walsh (1943-present, US) woke up after a fire destroyed his belongings, his marriage collapsed, and he was in an accident that broke his neck. It was then that he too cried out and God answered.

Eckhart Tolle (1948-present, German now Canada) woke up when he got to the point where he said, he “could not live with himself any longer.” In a similar way the Course began after Dr. William Thetford (1923-1988, US) turned to Dr. Helen Schucman (1909-1981 US) and said, “There has to be another way” meaning there had to be some way we humans could get along with each other without all the ego games, the backbiting, fighting which characterized their relationship and that of most folks on this planet.

 

         The Way of Work – The Way of Miracles

         Windows and doors are nice, they let the light in. Tempests and storms have their place as well. They clear out the dead branches and they too let the light in. Friends and enemies make us sit up and pay attention. They make us more aware – more conscious of how unconscious we have been. The Course might be thought of as a way between the extremes of quiet mediation as a means of awakening, and crashing and burning as a means of awakening. The Course may seem difficult and we’re likely to run into unanticipated challenges; still, if you stick with it and do only what it asks, the Course removes the blocks to your awareness of Love (the Voice for God))

 

Learning How to Learn

The Course shares some of the characteristics of Jnana, Karma and Bhakti yoga. Jnana means “knowledge,” more specifically, “knowledge of the absolute.” The Course also is the way of work – working on ourselves. It consists of a Workbook, a Textbook, and A Manual for Teachers. Obviously, we are trying to learn something. What we’re essentially learning is how to learn from a wise inner teacher. Indeed, if we realized how wise this teacher is, we would drop all non-essentials (dreaming of the world) and focus on hearing only this voice. It is also a kind of Bhakti Yoga as it asks us to dedicate our whole heart to each other and the work that is asked of us to reach home together. Fortunately, the Course is slow and gentle. We begin our journey into listening by giving five minutes in the beginning of our day.

 

We waken hearing Him, and let Him speak to us five minutes as the day begins,

and end the day by listening again five minutes more before we go to sleep. Our only preparation is to

let our interfering thoughts be laid aside,

not separately, but all of them as one.

W-140.11.1-2 (bold mine)

 

We are asked to lay defenses down and let go of the need to be right. It’s actually better to be wrong. Indeed, it’s not until I realize “I’m wrong” that I have the option of choosing for the right-mind. We do not hear the Voice for God because we are inherently evil. It’s not because we are stupid. We don’t hear the Voice for God because we are terrified of the loss of our individuality. We want to do it our own way and we’re afraid that if God wins, we will lose.

Truth is it’s a win-win.

When God wins we find ourselves again.

 

The reason you need my help is because you have denied

your own Guide and therefore need guidance.

My role is to separate the true from the false,

so truth can break through the barriers the ego has

set up and can shine into your mind.

Against our united strength the ego cannot prevail.

T-4.III.2:4-6