ACIM IV. This Need Not Be, P 1,2. If you cannot hear the Voice for God, it is because you do not choose to listen.

IV. This Need Not Be, P 1

1 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. Yet this is what you want. This is what you are fighting to keep, and what you are vigilant to save. Your mind is filled with schemes to save the face of your ego, and you do not seek the face of Christ. The glass in which the ego seeks to see its face is dark indeed. How can it maintain the trick of its existence except with mirrors? But where you look to find yourself is up to you.

Where Do I Look?

Where do I look to find myself? There are only two places to look. I look to ego or I look to Spirit. How do I know where I have looked? My life shows me proof of where I looked. Everything in my life is a testament to the voice I listen to. Some days I am at peace with everything, no matter what happens. Some days I feel joy bubble up through me and into my world, no matter what is happening around me. Those are the days (sometimes the moments) when I listen to the Voice for God.

Other times I am afraid or angry, guilty, and fearful. Some days I spend finding fault and someone to blame. Some days I seem to manufacture problems out of thin air where there was nothing to be concerned about only moments before. Sometimes I laugh at my problems and accept the Holy Spirit’s help without hesitation, but sometimes I cling to them, cherish them, and share them with anyone who will listen. These are the times I am listening to the ego voice.

The Voice for Death or the Voice for Life

There are no other voices to hear, no other places to look to find myself. Just these two. So, it is simple to know how I got to this place of happiness and peace and just as simple to know how I got to the dark place of pain, suffering, and death. When I am holding a grievance or making a judgment, I don’t tell myself that I am choosing death, but that is what I am doing. There is no compromise in that. Every hateful thought is a choice for death. Every fearful and guilty thought is a choice for death.

We did not come here to learn about death. This we already know. We came here to learn to live! We can’t live if we are continually choosing death. This experience we are having and what we call life is just a dream of life, not the real thing. I wonder if it even has anything at all in common with Life. The way out of this dream seems to be to back out of it the way we came into it.

Each time I notice a thought that stems from an ego belief, I become willing to be corrected. I accept the Atonement for that belief. See, I am stepping backward, undoing the ego as I go. I am guided through this process by the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God. He directs my steps, strengthens and comforts me. He speaks to me all through the day. Am I listening? I can only hear one voice at a time. In each moment, I choose the voice I would hear.

IV. This Need Not Be, P 2

2 I have said that you cannot change your mind by changing your behavior, but I have also said, and many times, that you can change your mind. When your mood tells you that you have chosen wrongly, and this is so whenever you are not joyous, then know this need not be. In every case you have thought wrongly about some brother God created, and are perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass. Think honestly what you have thought that God would not have thought, and what you have not thought that God would have you think. Search sincerely for what you have done and left undone accordingly, and then change your mind to think with God’s. This may seem hard to do, but it is much easier than trying to think against it. Your mind is one with God’s. Denying this and thinking otherwise has held your ego together, but has literally split your mind. As a loving brother I am deeply concerned with your mind, and urge you to follow my example as you look at yourself and at your brother, and see in both the glorious creations of a glorious Father.

Changing My Mind About a Relationship

Oh, there is lots of good stuff in this paragraph! Jesus has already established that it is not the world that we need to change but our minds. This is emphasized when he says we cannot change our minds by changing our behavior. Here is an example I can think of. Even after I divorced my husband, he was still very much a part of my life as my children’s father. Also, we worked together at the same company. So, I still had to deal with him and many of the same issues I had hoped to escape through the divorce.

I soon realized that you could divorce a partner, but not the relationship, and I did eventually do the work to heal that relationship. In doing so, I tried treating him like the child of God he is, but inevitably, my true feelings would surface, and an argument or harsh words would be the result. Something happened to change this situation. I did the vigilant work of mind-watching and asking for the Atonement in this situation. This shifted my mind, so that I really want that healing.

I changed my mind about that man and realized that he is the Son of God. Now I was not just acting like he was God’s child, but I knew he was that holy one, and there were no more slip-ups. I knew this had to be done because I was not happy when I was around him. And when I thought of him or remembered situations from the past, I would become angry or sad and often guilty. Jesus says to watch our mood, and when it is not joyous, then know this need not be.

Changing My Mind About My Sister-In-Law

Jesus says that if I am experiencing feelings that are not joyous, I need to search my mind for dark thoughts about my brother. My experience has been that this means I have found someone guilty, and I believe my judgment. It could be me or someone else I am judging. At first, I didn’t always recognize the dark thoughts for what they were. This happened when my sister-in-law was sick, and I was worried.

Worrying about my sister-in-law when she was sick, at first glance, seems like love, but I learned that it is not really love but an attack. I believed in her sickness, which means I was attacking her invulnerability. This is a different way to think and has taken some practice on my part just to be aware of what I am doing. Finally, I saw that she believed in her sickness, and I still believed in it sometimes. But I also knew that we could change our minds. I work on keeping an eye on my thoughts so that I will know when I need to ask for help. I accept the Atonement for myself in this situation, and I ask for the Atonement on her behalf as well.

As Jesus has already told us and will tell us many times in the Course, it is our minds that must be changed. He is really emphasizing this now, telling us that because he loves us, he is deeply concerned with our minds. Another thing that he tells us all through the Course is that we must see both ourselves and our brother differently and as one. We are all glorious creations!

Changing My Mind Through Joining

One night when I was still working, I spoke to a group of people who had a problem they wanted me to solve or to at least give them good advice on how to solve it. I felt very competent to do this, and I knew we both shared the same intent. As a salesperson, I used to think that my job was to convince people to buy my product, and I measured success and failure against that scale. Eventually, I saw this was not true. I began to realize that my job is to be helpful in whatever way I can.

So, when I got to the Board meeting, I felt pleased to be there. They had a problem, and they needed more information. I had information and wanted to help them solve their problem. It felt like joining. I understood that solving their problem would not help us wake up, but coming together with a shared intent, would. The answer to separation is joining, and the form joining takes is irrelevant.

When I left, I felt good for both of us. I felt love for them and felt like I had been helpful. But the ego mind was all over the place. It kept replaying the meeting over and over, and then it started critiquing it and making judgments. Soon it led to concerns and doubts, and even fear. It all happened very quickly, and while I saw it happening, I seemed helpless to stop it.

Changing My Mind Through Gratitude

My joy and peace were gone as soon as I started paying attention to the ego thinking. I brought my mind back to sanity over and over as I reminded myself that I had one purpose: to be helpful. Further, I reminded myself that getting a sale is not my purpose and that waking up is. I asked myself what it was that I was thinking that God would not think and what I was failing to think that God would think. I examined my thoughts carefully as I made this evaluation, which helped me to see clearly.

These and other reminders helped, but I thought doing this should not be so hard. I felt like I should be able to move out of this conflicted thinking more easily and with less suffering. It could not be God’s Will that I suffer to wake up, so I must be doing this with the ego. It was then that I had one of those remarkable moments when I was given a thought that clearly did not come from my thinking mind. I was pointed to gratitude.

As soon as I accepted this direction, gratitude welled up in me. I allowed myself to bathe in that feeling and to enjoy the gratitude. I encouraged the feeling of gratitude as I began thanking God for His help. As soon as I did this, I noticed how good it felt and how peaceful I became. So, every time the ego would try to distract me with more worry thoughts, I returned to gratitude. I fell asleep that night with a smile on my face.

Changing My Mind With Help

It is up to me to change my mind, but I am never alone in this. I have help outside the closed system of ego thinking, which will run me in endless depressing circles if I let it. If I decide that I don’t want to remain confused and I surrender to my Helper, whatever I need to help me change my mind is provided. I don’t have to figure it out on my own or do something to deserve it. The way to awaken is to desire it more than I desire anything else.

To read Pathways of Light Insights on this section, CLICK HERE.