III. The Guide to Salvation, P 4
4 The Voice of the Holy Spirit is weak in you. That is why you must share It. It must be increased in strength before you can hear It. It is impossible to hear It in yourself while It is so weak in your mind. It is not weak in Itself, but It is limited by your unwillingness to hear It. If you make the mistake of looking for the Holy Spirit in yourself alone your thoughts will frighten you because, by adopting the ego’s viewpoint, you are undertaking an ego-alien journey with the ego as guide. This is bound to produce fear.
Journal
Over and over throughout A Course in Miracles we are told how essential it is that we recognize our oneness. Separateness in any form is the ego, and anything we attempt from the ego’s viewpoint will produce fear in us. So when I look for the Holy Spirit in myself alone my thoughts will frighten me. Here is an example from my life.
There is a man who has insinuated himself in my life, who I began to see as a potential problem. I am going to call him Bob. Bob is really pushy and self-centered. I had this whole story about him in my mind, none of which actually happened, but I believed it would. My chief desire was to find a way to get rid of him without causing hard feelings, without making myself feel guilty, and without tarnishing my image as a nice ego.
Because I wanted the above things to happen, I created a web of deceit so complex that, for awhile, I was able to see myself as an innocent victim and Bob as the victimizer. I kept going over the reasons I needed to solve this problem, and they all centered on Bob’s guilt. I kept asking Holy Spirit to help me figure out what to do about this character and I just wasn’t getting an answer.
From the place I am now, the whole thing is so ridiculous that I stand amazed at my ability to deceive myself. But just a short time ago, I thought he was the problem that needed to be solved, and I was getting impatient waiting for the Holy Spirit to come up with a solution. Of course the real problem was that the Holy Spirit was speaking to me, but I was hearing Him only faintly because I was looking for Him only in myself.
I was not interested in finding the Holy Spirit in Bob. I wanted Bob to be guilty and thus the problem to be outside me. It is the age-old ego strategy which I managed to disguise as something else, at least for a little while. I did begin to see what I was doing after awhile, because I kept asking for help, and my desire to see overcame my desire to be right, and my desire to defend myself.
The Holy Spirit was telling me all along that the solution to my problem is to keep my mind focused on the Holy Spirit in Bob. I am to disregard the appearance of ego behavior, and to remember who Bob really is. My intention to know only the truth will heal all problems that I imagine to be imminent, because it will heal my mind from which all problems arise.
As it turns out, the Voice for God had not suddenly become silent in me after all. I had failed to hear It because I was listening for an answer that was just for me. When I lay aside my defenses and became willing to trust, I began to listen for the answer that was for both us, the Voice came in loud and clear.