II. The Voice for God 1-6
- Healing is not creating; it is reparation. The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed and will be when they have been healed. This alteration of the time sequence should be quite familiar because it is very similar to the shift in the perception of time that the miracle introduces. The Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracle-mindedness; the decision to heal the separation by letting it go. Your will is still in you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it. God Himself keeps your will alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time. The miracle itself is a reflection of this union of will between Father and Son.
- The Holy Spirit is the spirit of joy. He is the Call to return with which God blessed the mind of His separated Sons. This is the vocation of the mind. The mind had no calling until the separation, because before that it had only being, and would not have understood the call to right thinking. The Holy Spirit is God’s answer to the separation; the means by which the Atonement heals until the whole mind returns to creating.
- The principle of Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When the ego was made, God placed in the mind the call to joy. This call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound. That is why you must choose to hear one of two voices within you. One you made yourself, and that one is not of God. But the other is given you by God, Who asks you only to listen to it. The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense. His is the Voice who calls you back to where you were before and will be again. It is possible in this world to hear only that Voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned, and God’s Sons are as equal as learners as they are as sons.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.[1]
In today’s text reading, Jesus expounds upon the role of Holy Spirit in our minds. He tells us that when we think with our higher mind we think with Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit heals the wounded mind, it restores the mind to God, to our original creation, to who and what we were before we made a mind in opposition to Love. Holy Spirit inspires us to perform acts of love, to be charitable, to be truly helpful because to be truly helpful means we do no harm. We let go of all that would bind us to a world governed by fear, by thoughts of limitation, by thoughts of us-against-them. God placed His Will in our minds because His Will is our will because we belong to Him. Our will aligning perfectly with God’s Will can never be obliterated, God calls to us through Holy Spirit throughout our sojourn in time. Miracles, which are acts of love, charity, and helpfulness, reflect this union of the Father with His Son.
The Holy Spirit is God’s Gift to us; it is the spirit of Joy. It lifts us from our lower minds which do not know Joy because they were not created in love but made from fear and distrust. Holy Spirit is God’s response to the miscreation. Holy Spirit is our call to God, the means to the Atonement, to our wholeness and completeness in our Creator and to our role as co-creator with God.
This call of Joy dissolves the ego. We do not have to beg God to implant Holy Spirit in us – Holy Spirit is the Voice for God who calls us back to Him, Who reminds us of our Father, Who reminds us of who and what we really are, where we came from, and where we will be again. It is possible in the flesh to hear the Voice for God and only the Voice for God, to be free of the other voice completely. While it takes great courage, determination, and commitment to learn, it can be done. Jesus did it and so can we. Jesus had no advantage over us – he was not smarter or any less prone to sin and temptation. We are all like Jesus. We do not have to be an intellectual, a scholar, a spiritual master. In God’s eyes we are all equal learners no matter what our IQ, our intellect, or level of education.
Unlike the separated realm, where some are attractive and some are not, where some are rich and others are poor, where some people seem to be intelligent and others are sadly lacking, each one of us are the Kingdom of God. When we generated thoughts of fear and worry, distrust and suspicion to enter our mind, we lost the fullness of God. We entered a bleak and darkened realm of brokenness, partiality, and disparity. In this state, we needed a new light, Jesus tells us. Holy Spirit is that light; It banishes thoughts of darkness because It is not afraid of darkness, nor is It afraid of anything that happens in darkness because It knows that darkness and all things that happen in darkness are a ruse, a perception based upon illusions, a mass hallucination of all that is untrue. Holy Spirit is the glory which returns our minds to completion, wholeness, and truth. Separation is recognized as a thing of the past, a past that is nowhere because as soon as it happens it is over, an instance of nothingness – for time and everything in it has no meaning and no place in that which is forever.
In paragraph six, Jesus distinguishes between God and Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is not God, It is of God, it is the Voice for God within each one of us. God did not come to the realm of darkness with us; He put His Voice in us to call us Home. God remains outside the realm of time, of separation, of the miscreation. God is Everything; God has no place in the nothingness of separation, and its lies, wars, bloodshed, and miscreation. We cannot know God in such a state as ego, brothers. When we made another voice, we broke the direct communication with God we shared in Creation. However, we can hear the Voice for God within our higher minds, speaking for Him, calling to us to return to Him. The choice for Holy Spirit is the choice for God – following the guidance of Holy Spirit keeps us on the path that leads to God.
Holy Spirit then is God’s Gift to us while our minds are separated from His Kingdom. I like to think of Holy Spirit as our homing device. No matter where we are, what we do, or who we are with, Holy Spirit calls to us through our higher minds counteracting the trite, meaningless, impious drives of the ego. Holy Spirit reminds us of the freedom and liberty of holiness, which cancels out the fearful threats, guilt, and certain shame of the ego. Choice has no meaning for God and His Creations, for creative power has no demands, no expectations, no worries. Rules and limitations are unnecessary for those who are holy and who think with God. In the realm of humanity, our freedom is limited to choice – do we choose ego and its onslaught of forms with all the same content, its ongoing go-rounds of death and despair or do we choose Holy Spirit, Who returns to us our rightful Kingdom, where we enjoy true creativity, freedom, and liberty forever?
God did not abandon us to our egos! He puts His Voice within each of us, reminding us of His love and devotion to us, reminding us of who and what we really are and where we truly belong.
We will end with paragraph six and finish the last six paragraphs of The Voice for God section tomorrow. Today, let us choose the Voice for God, lifting our hearts and minds in appreciation and gratitude for the perfect Guide Who leads us Home.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 5: Healing and wholeness. II. The voice for god 1-6. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
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