ACIM 5. II. The Voice for God, P 4, 5, 6. You are the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your mind and so you need a new light.
The Voice for God
4 II. The Voice for God, P 4
4 You are the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your mind and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls away, and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own. Before the separation you did not need guidance. You knew as you will know again, but as you do not know now.
We are at the end of our journey, you and I. It may not seem so because of all the mistaken thoughts that are coming up for healing, but it is, never the less, true. In fact, our awareness of those thoughts is an integral part of that healing. We would not be doing this study or certainly not sticking with it unless we were ready to wake up. The closer I get, the more aware I become of the guilt and fear thoughts. I know that this is good, but Myron feels anxious about this, and since I am still fairly identified with her, I feel her anxiety.
Conflicted Thinking
I also feel eager for the next step and the next. This is good, but the two emotions together, anxiety and eagerness, create a sense of conflict in the mind, which is uncomfortable. I’m writing about it this morning because Byron Katie says all war belongs on paper, and war is what it feels like. I am at war with myself, wanting to wake up but afraid to leave my dream.
The ending of this story is not in doubt, however I might feel conflicted about it. Light always banishes darkness, and I have invited the Light to shine in my mind. I invite it every time I notice the dark thoughts that still have a place in my mind. Jesus reminds me that the darkness is not permanent and that I was not always asleep.
Before the separation, I did not need a guide, but since I dream of separation, I am grateful for the Helper in my mind. I intend to take full advantage of Him, being vigilant for the beliefs that He would shine away at my say-so. I am also comforted to know that my brother, Jesus, stands at the end to correct any errors I cannot. Thank you, Brother.
5 II. The Voice for God, P 5
5 God does not guide, because He can share only perfect knowledge. Guidance is evaluative, because it implies there is a right way and also a wrong way, one to be chosen and the other to be avoided. By choosing one you give up the other. The choice for the Holy Spirit is the choice for God. God is not in you in a literal sense; you are part of Him. When you chose to leave Him He gave you a Voice to speak for Him, because He could no longer share His knowledge with you without hindrance. Direct communication was broken because you had made another voice.
I made a voice other than God’s and decided to believe everything it said as if it were my god now. That’s kind of scary when I think about it, and I suppose that little twinge of anxiety I feel when I write this is because I am touching on that deep well of unconscious guilt that resides in my mind. I think I replaced God, and now He can’t even talk to me because I cut Him out of my awareness. It feels scary because I am afraid He is angry about this, but if He were angry, He would not have given me a Guide, a Voice to speak for Him.
Communication With God
Direct communication with God has been cut off, not by Him, but by me. I chose to make another voice, and I can choose for God instead. This is what I am doing as I practice A Course in Miracles. I am choosing to have the ego undone because the ego is the thing that hinders our communication. I do this by choosing the Holy Spirit over the ego and by doing this consistently until I no longer hear two voices.
There are times when I feel like this is an impossible task. I am encouraged to know that I am in God. How could I be separated from God when I live in Him? And yet, I am no longer in direct communication with my Creator and no longer in peace. The only answer must be that I am not actually separate but am dreaming of being separate. I am now tired of this dream and am ready to wake up. The Holy Spirit guides me out of the dream as I allow Him to undo the ego a belief at a time.
With Holy Spirit, I will Succeed
I used to have very low self-esteem. Every time I would feel less than I would ask for healing. I slowly let go of each mistaken thought and allowed the Holy Spirit to replace that thought with a true one. I cannot hold two diametrically opposed beliefs at the same time. If I believe Holy Spirit, then the ego belief is gone. It really is that simple, yet it took years to accept that I cannot be less than someone else. And It was not Holy Spirit doing a poor job of guiding me. It was me being balky at letting go of specialness, which I thought I needed, but in the end, I did it.
Each ego belief that I allow to be undone by the Holy Spirit makes it easier to do the next. He and I are working on a core belief now. I asked Him to help me let go of the belief in guilt; frankly, it’s kicking my butt. But I know that, together, we will succeed, so it is easier to do than it would have been just a short time ago.
Working at the Right Pace
The guilty thoughts arise for me to look at with the Holy Spirit, one after another, and I can get temporarily confused and begin to believe them, forgetting the purpose of looking, at least momentarily. But now, even when that happens, even when I am confused, I am not afraid. This is because I have gone through this process often enough to trust it. There has been enough mind healing that I am familiar with the process and comfortable with it.
This is why the Holy Spirit works with us at a pace we can tolerate. It would not have worked if I had done this before I was ready. I would have run from the guilt thoughts, throwing them at others where I could and furiously burying them as I have before. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that I can trust Holy Spirit. If I am guided to look at something, it is because I am ready and I can do it.
6 II. The Voice for God, P 6
6 The Holy Spirit calls you both to remember and to forget. You have chosen to be in a state of opposition in which opposites are possible. As a result, there are choices you must make. In the holy state the will is free, so that its creative power is unlimited and choice is meaningless. Freedom to choose is the same power as freedom to create, but its application is different. Choosing depends on a split mind. The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. God did not leave His children comfortless, even though they chose to leave Him. The voice they put in their minds was not the Voice for His Will, for which the Holy Spirit speaks.
Before the split mind, choices were meaningless. This is because, in our true state, the will is free, and our creative power is unlimited. But now, because of the split mind, there are opposites, and we must make choices. We made a voice that was not real, and we believed that voice, so we were given another Voice. Now there are two voices, and we must choose the one we would listen to.
The ego voice we made and believe will lead us deeper into the illusion and further from Love. The Voice given to us by God will help us wake up from the dream of separation and remind us of the truth of who we are. It will lead us to Heaven and restore the memory of our True Self. There is no option not to make a choice. This choice must be made every moment of every day.
Depression
When I was depressed, it was because I chose to believe the ego voice. When I made another choice, I didn’t even realize I was doing so. It is only in retrospect that I see clearly the moment I chose differently. I should say it was the moment I began to choose differently because it required many choices to let go of the beliefs that made a world where depression is possible. I still make that choice every day.
My life began to change when I began to question my beliefs. Until then, I just assumed that depression was unavoidable for me. It was my fate. I am sure that beneath that belief was the belief that I was unworthy and being punished by God for my sins. But after I began to study the Course, I learned to doubt the idea of a judgmental, punishing God. I began to doubt my unworthiness. Eventually, I began to doubt the inevitability of depression as a way of life.
I did not set out to rid myself of depression. I didn’t even believe that was possible. But as I questioned my beliefs about God and my nature, I realized my mind was sick. I learned to ask that my mind be healed, and the miracle occurred. Just as a sick mind projected a sick brain, a healed mind projected a healed brain, and the symptoms were gone.
The Appeal of Depression
The ego still offers me the option of being depressed. I can see the appeal now. I used to feel sorry for myself and expected others to be sorry for me, too, and that pity was how I felt loved. When the depression was strong, I could opt out of life and had the perfect excuse to do so. I was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed, and no one expected me to. I was so special.
It would be a long time before I realized it, but I loved my depression story. A friend had a huge bottle of pills that she kept for the moment the depression was too great to bear. That bottle of pills was her way out if she couldn’t stand life anymore. One day she gave them to me because she didn’t need them anymore. I took them with gratitude and kept them as my failsafe.
You would think that my first reaction would be to beg her for her secret of getting out of the depression, but instead, I just took the pills and was happy to have them. I believed that death was my only escape, and I wasn’t interested in healing as an escape. I loved that story of depression, and I wasn’t giving it up. That should have clued me into how sick my mind was, but it would take more suffering to reach the point where I began to ask for a different way.
Making Another Choice
It took time for me to make a different choice, but always, even when I didn’t believe in the possibility of another choice, that other choice was waiting patiently for me. I have friends who chose the bottle of pills, or some other way out, who didn’t choose life. What about them? The cycle of birth and death will just spit them back into the illusion again, and they will have another chance to choose the Voice for God.
Failure is not an option. We are the Sons of God. We cannot be destroyed, not even by our own hand. And we can dream of suffering as long as we can stand it, but eventually, we will dream of God, and He will lift us up. He waits only for us to make that choice.
We don’t go Home alone. We heal together as we join with our brother for the purpose of healing. The more we practice opening up to the Holy Spirit joined with our brother, the stronger our connection becomes. Here are some wonderful courses that help us do just that. CLICK HERE to explore them.