In the dream that is our apparent waking experience of life, the “Voice” of our eternal Helper, the Holy Spirit, which the Course refers to as the “Voice of the Divine,” calls to us to help us begin our journey of awakening from this dream, and then guides us every step of the way to our true Home. “The Divine’s Voice speaks to me all through the day.” This Voice speaks to us in the sanctuary of our heart, and along with providing guidance in every aspect of our lives, also provides protection from all harm when we choose to listen to It. “The Divine’s healing Voice protects all things today.”
Thus learning to recognize Spirit’s Voice is essential, allowing us to:
- accept Spirit’s Guidance in everything we do so that we can awaken to Reality;
- be protected from all spiritual danger and harm;
- sort out what is the same and what is different—the true from the false and the real from illusion;
- bring into consciousness every value and belief that we hold so that we can assess them truly;
- evaluate the results of all of our creative activity, helping this to be worthy of Eternity; and,
- receive revelations.
Learning to recognize or discern this “Voice” means to sense Spirit’s Presence and what Its Counsel to us feels like in our heart as well as in our mind and will, so that the Voice can become a meaningful part of our daily experience and a genuine force for transforming our lives. This “hearing” of “the Voice” is a process of evolving our sense of spiritual discernment through enlivening our heart.
“Everyone must eventually succeed in doing what the Divine appointed them to do. When you forget, remember that you walk with the Divine and with Its Word upon your heart. Who could despair when Hope like this is theirs? Illusions of despair may seem to come, but learn how to see beyond them and therefore not to be deceived by them. Behind each one there is Reality and there is the Divine. Why wait for Reality and trade It for illusions, when the Divine’s Love is only an Instant farther along the Road where all illusions end? The end is sure and guaranteed by the Divine.”
Fortunately, we are not asked to learn to recognize and discern the many voices of all of our spiritual helpers and teachers on our journey Home. To the degree that these helpers and teachers are unified with the Divine and with Spirit, their many voices are joined as One in the Voice of the Divine – in Spirit – so that discerning Its Voice allows us to simultaneously discern and benefit from all genuinely helpful “voices” and perspectives.
In a similar way, given Jesus’ role as leader of the Atonement, the Course speaks of Jesus’ voice as being synonymous with that of Spirit’s. This is another example of the connection between the two. “I [Jesus] am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you perceive me it will be because you have invited Spirit. For It will send you Its Witnesses to perceive if you will invite and expect Them.” By learning to recognize Jesus’ voice, to the degree that we collaborate with him in our own awakening and the awakening of the world, we are automatically also engaging the Voice of the Divine—the Holy Spirit. By engaging the Holy Spirit we also automatically engage Jesus. Because of this Unity of these two eternal Helpers on the journey of awakening, learning to hear the Voice also allows miracles to be performed through us.
Hearing and recognizing the Voice will likely not be like hearing and recognizing a human voice, though in the case of the Course’s scribe, Helen Schucman, Jesus’ voice as a human voice spoke the Course directly to her in words she heard and understood. It will rather probably be a quality of energy one comes to know, a feeling of peace, joy, the perfection of the present moment, and confidence when choosing a thought in our minds or a course of action in our lives, or refraining from a thought or action that would not bring us peace, joy, and confidence, i.e., that would bring us an experience of some form of fear, which we can know we have chosen when we don’t feel peace, joy, and confidence.
“There is one Thought in particular that the teacher of the Divine should remember throughout the day. This is the Thought of pure Joy, of Peace, of limitless Release, limitless because all things are freed within It along with them. In this Thought are all things seen to be innocent and safe. This is how the Presence of Love is recognized. It is in this Presence that the teacher of the Divine should spend their day. This is both the goal of our learning and the means to achieving it.”
This beautiful feeling will also fill our hearts when saying yes to a miracle that we are being invited to perform, and when refraining from miracles that we are not being asked in any particular situation to perform, even though we might feel inspired by them.
The confidence we experience in our sense of knowing that we are being asked to perform a specific miracle in a specific situation will come from the deepest part of our subconscious, miracle-mindedness, when this part of our psyche becomes accessible to us after having allowed Spirit to bring into right relationship the other sublevels of our subconscious, and to bring healing into the various aspects of our conscious awareness.
Those who have sacred relationships with beloved and esteemed gurus, rabbis, priests, imams, ministers, shamans, mentors, teachers, counselors, and/or friends in the many other versions of the universal Truth curriculum which they may be students of may wonder what the difference is between Jesus’ voice and guidance and that of their own teacher’s voice and guidance. The answer is that there should be no difference. All true teachers of awakening are teaching a version of the universal Truth curriculum given them by the Holy Spirit, the Voice of the Divine, so there can be no actual conflict between teachings. To the degree that any teacher’s will is One with Divine Will, they will also be One with Spirit, with Divine Essence, and with our and their elder brother Jesus. How could it be otherwise?
The main difference between Jesus’ voice and that of any other human being is touched on by Jesus in the Course’s Text in a passage having to do with the American psychic Edgar Cayce, who worked miracles abundantly throughout his adult life and to the benefit of many individuals and of humanity, but without first asking Jesus whether he, Cayce, was the right person in any given situation to perform a given miracle. According to Jesus in the Course, through Cayce’s indiscriminate working of miracles he burned himself out unnecessarily, and many of his miracles were not as effective as they otherwise would have been. Getting burned out by performing miracles may seem strange until it is remembered that miracles are a manifestation of tremendous Power, and therefore must be worked with with care and under the Guidance and Protection of superconscious control.
“Because miracles are expressions of Love doesn’t mean that they will always be effective. One of the major problems with miracle workers in this regard is that they are so sure that what they are doing is right, because they know it stems from Love, that they do not pause long enough before working a miracle to turn to me [Jesus] and allow me to use their miracle readiness where it is most needed in any given situation. In their passion to heal they can forget that I’m the only one [i.e., the only human being] who can perform miracles indiscriminately, that is, without asking for guidance on where a miracle is most needed . . .”
While it should be fairly straightforward to learn to recognize the Voice for Peace and Joy in our lives, because Peace and Joy are what we experience when we do listen to this Voice, there is another voice, a manifestation of the wounded part of our mind, that can confuse us about where peace and joy are found. Per the Course’s teaching, the ego seems to operate as a semi-conscious entity in this world, though this is an illusion because the ego is merely a projection of a part of ourselves, i.e., of our split mind. The ego can be said to be the mindset and voice of victimhood in our minds and in the world, with all the bitterness and related characteristics that victimhood brings with it.
“The Voice of the Divine comes from your own inner Altar to Divine Will. This Altar is not a thing. It is a devotion. But you have other devotions now. Your divided devotion has given you the two voices [Spirit and ego], and you must choose at which altar, that is, which devotion, you will to serve. The call you answer now is an assessment, because it is a decision. The decision itself is very simple. It is made on the basis of which call you decide is worth more to you.”
The ego’s voice speaks to us incessantly in our minds because our minds are split, and this constant internal dialog is what maintains the illusory world. In this sense the ego’s “voice” competes with the Voice of the Divine as to whose thoughts and meaning will be projected onto the blank screen of the world, but it is not a two-way competition. The ego shouts to get our attention, while the Holy Spirit waits quietly until invited to share Its Perspective, which is always true and always leads to Peace, Joy, and Confidence. When Spirit projects Its Thoughts onto the screen of the world through us, we experience true Meaning instead of chaos. “For those who want to hear It, the still, small Voice of the Divine is not drowned out by all the ego’s raucous screams and senseless ravings.”
“What you do not yet understand is that the two voices, the Holy Spirit and the ego, speak for different interpretations of the same thing, and do so simultaneously, or almost simultaneously, for the ego always speaks first. . . . The ego speaks in judgment, and the Holy Spirit reverses its decisions, much as a nation’s highest court has the power to reverse a lower court’s decision about the laws of their land.”
Because two voices – Spirit’s and the ego’s – speak to us in our minds, one of the goals of the Course is to train us to recognize not just Spirit but also the ego and its voice, and the results that listening to it brings. By learning to recognize the difference between the two voices available to us for guidance, and the contrast in the experience each one inevitably brings to us when we follow its guidance, we will voluntarily come to stop listening to the ego’s voice and listen instead to and follow the Voice and Guidance of Spirit.
“The ego’s voice is a hallucination. Because of this it would be unrealistic to expect the ego to say, ‘I am not real.’ Hallucinations are inaccurate perceptions of reality. But you are not asked to dispel them alone. You are merely asked to assess them in terms of what they offer you, and their results to you. If you decide you do not want them on the basis of the loss of peace they incur, they will be removed from your mind for you. The ego’s voice is a call to war, and war does deprive you of Peace, as does every response to the ego’s voice. Yet in this war there is no opponent. This is the reinterpretation of reality that you must make to secure Peace, and the only one you need ever make.”
“Listen to the ego’s perspective, to what it says, and look upon what it directs you to perceive, and it is sure that you will perceive yourself as tiny, vulnerable, and afraid. You will experience depression, a sense of worthlessness, and feelings of impermanence and unreality. You will believe that you are helpless prey to forces far beyond your own control, and far more powerful than you. And you will think that the world you made directs your destiny. For this will be your faith. But understand that just because it is your faith and has become your belief doesn’t make it reality.”
“It should be asked how the voice of something that does not exist can be so insistent. Have you ever seriously considered the distorting power of something you want, even if it is not true? You have had many experiences of how what you want can distort what you perceive.”
By more and more consistently making the right choice regarding which voice to listen to, we can begin to recognize our own true voice of knowing, which is also One with Spirit’s and Jesus’ and with all those who have completed their parts in Atonement, and to allow our true minds to see the real world through us. Taking recontrol of our mind and voice in this way is referred to in the very first line of the Renewed Course: “This is a training in integrating and directing your mind so you will be able to work miracles, that is, to allow miracles to be performed through you.”