Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now
Lesson 49 God’s Voice speaks to me all through the day.
- It is quite possible to listen to God’s Voice all through the day without interrupting your regular activities in any way. The part of your mind in which truth abides is in constant communication with God, whether you are aware of it or not. It is the other part of your mind that functions in the world and obeys the world’s laws. It is this part that is constantly distracted, disorganized, and highly uncertain.
- The part that is listening to the Voice for God is calm, always at rest, and wholly certain. It is really the only part there is. The other part is a wild illusion, frantic and distraught, but without reality of any kind. Try today not to listen to it. Try to identify with the part of your mind where stillness and peace reign forever. Try to hear God’s Voice call to you lovingly, reminding you that your Creator has not forgotten His Son.
- We will need at least four five-minute practice periods today, and more if possible. We will try actually to hear God’s Voice reminding you of Him and of your Self. We will approach this happiest and holiest of thoughts with confidence, knowing that, in doing so, we are joining our will with the Will of God. He wants you to hear His Voice. He gave it to you to be heard.
- Listen in deep silence. Be very still, and open your mind. Go past all the raucous shrieks and imaginings that cover your real thoughts and obscure your eternal link with God. Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sights and sounds of this insane world. You do not live here. We are trying to reach your real home. We are trying to reach the place where you are truly welcome. We are trying to reach God.
- Do not forget to repeat today’s idea very frequently. Do so with your eyes open when necessary but closed when possible, and be sure to sit quietly and repeat the idea for today whenever you can, closing your eyes on the world, and realizing that you are inviting God’s Voice to speak to you. [1]
Notes and Personal Application (2019): God’s Voice speaks to me all through the day. God’s Voice reminds me not to be afraid. God’s Voice reminds me of how blessed I am in every single way. God’s Voice reminds me that I do not have pain or suffering. God’s Voice reminds me that I do not have to be afraid of my sister. God’s Voice reminds me that I can pray for everything I need while I am living in this realm and in this body. God’s Voice speaks to me all through the day. God’s Voice calls me to study this Course. God’s Voice has called me to be a teacher and writer.
Notes and Personal Application (2020): This morning’s devotion took place while Lover was driving through the Shenandoah Valley on his way to work. He reminded me of how beautiful the mountains are and that during our five-minute meditation, God’s Voice assured him of peace, of calmness, of everything being okay. In the night, he woke up with a sense of being lost and confused, a feeling that he had not experienced for years, and it had troubled him, but now hearing God’s Voice, he realized that there was nothing to it, no cause for concern.
Here in front of my computer sitting with our lesson spread out before me, I, too, experienced that part of me that listens for the Voice for God. The calm and certain part of me that is anxious for nothing at all. Quite a few years ago, my daughter’s father sent her journals to me, her ashes, the photographs, and memorabilia from the time she had lived with him in Nashville. He was concerned that I would take to heart the things she had written about me in her journal, the way she had blasted me, vowed never to forgive me, listed my failings and shortcomings as a mother, and her hatred and resentment toward me for marrying James, whom she also described in the most unglowing terms! While I promised him, not to take it to heart, here is the truth – it did hurt. It stung. It made me feel terrible about myself. It made me feel as if not only the troubled, teenage rantings of my daughter in heaven had declared me unfit but that the whole world was against me and that my sins defined me.
While I could chalk up her rantings towards her dearest friends, as typical teenage angst, the words and phrases she had used to describe me, and our troubled relationship, broke my heart. When I did not die from the hurt, I decided to make something from it. Not in spite of her hatred, disgust, and utter disappointment in me, but largely because of it, I gathered my courage and completed the degree she said I would never complete. I became the teacher that she said I would never become. I finished the novel that she said I would never complete. I stayed married and enjoyed the process of James and I becoming far more than the egotistical, narcissistic, sex-addicted floozies whom she had depicted in her diaries. In other words, I let her thoughts that she had so diligently and lovingly recorded in her journals, change me into a better version of myself.
I stress the word lovingly because it is love when we dare to speak the truth about our shadow and our special relationships. If Manda’s teenage diaries had been anything like her diaries from her earlier life, I would have gone on considering myself quite the spectacular, beautiful, kind, and good mother she wrote about in them. In her elementary days, she described our poverty-stricken life with a bohemian grace, focusing on the books we read each night, the way we cuddled on our old second-hand sofa, our sumptuous holiday dinners surrounded by the rest of our irregular tribe. How beautiful, caring, and comical her hard-working, hard-loving mother was with all her colorful boyfriends. Trips to Disney, swimming in my boyfriend’s pool, going to Niagara Falls, and eating in fancy restaurants – none of which we could afford on my salary – was described in rosy, and also loving terms. It would be easy for me to think of this as the words from the loving Manda, and the teenage journals as the hateful Manda – it terms of my own ego.
However, it was both of the voices that helped me to see my ego for what it was – not me! I was neither the hero nor the villain that is described in her journals. She was describing only a process and mistaking it for me – something we all do.
The Voice for God assures me that I will never find my identity in what others think of me – but they will offer me a most loving service by attacking my ego, not stroking it! We are so inclined to stroke one another’s egos, to flatter one another, to build each other up. “Oh, Sister Eckie, you are just the cat’s meow,” is what my ego craves to hear, when “Oh Sister Eckie, you need to stop taking everything so personal and get out of your head,” is what I need to hear! We are quick to burn the missive of hate and turn our back upon what causes us pain, but today in our first five-minute meditation the Voice for God tells me that even the attack of others informs of us of what we need to stop identifying with, the ways in which we have to stop engaging with the ego, close our eyes to the world, to move past the hurt and distress, and invite the Voice for God, Holy Spirit, to take the spite and transform it to work for our good.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 49 God’s Voice speaks…Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 78.
the friar patch 