Listen

"Listen, and hear your Father speak to you through His appointed Voice, which silences the thunder of the meaningless. Hear, and be silent. He would speak to you. He comes with miracles a thousand times as happy and as wonderful as those you ever dreamed or wished for in your dreams. His miracles are true. They will not fade when dreaming ends. They end the dream instead; and last forever, for they come from God to His dear Son, whose other name is You. Be still and listen to the Truth today." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 106, 2:1, 4:2-7, 9:1

"Let the Voice for God alone be Judge of what is worthy of your belief. Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt, because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its face. Accept His Word for what you are, for He bears witness to your beautiful creation, and the Mind Whose Thought created your reality. Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the Truth." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 151, 7:1, 8:1, 9:2, 6, & 7

Listen. What do you hear? Your heart beating. The hum of the furnace or the crackle of a fire. The soft cadence of your own breathing. Perhaps the breathing of a companion lying next to you. As your listening deepens, you may hear the silent settling of the house around you, and an occasional sound from beyond the house, cars in the street or the distant roar of a highway. Deeper still, and even with all the many sounds, cradling them all, there is a well of holy Silence. This Silence is so vast, so endless, It holds everything within Its Love. We fear the Truth of It, and so we focus on busyness, on mental distractions, on constant mind chatter. We fear simply being still and listening to the Truth. And yet it calls to us, like Home. It is Home. And out of this holy stillness, the Voice for God speaks to us.

Why do we fear the silence? ACIM reminds us that when we shut up and listen, the Voice will help us see through illusions, to recognize what is true. We are told that the Voice will remove all faith that we've placed in pain, disaster, suffering, and loss. "You will no longer doubt that only Good can come to you who are Beloved of God." Wow. What is it we fear, then? The loss of our littleness, our limitations, our pain and suffering and loss? We guard them as if they were our treasure. As Jesus told us, where our treasure is, there our heart will be. Our hearts have been totally committed to the illusion of a little, separate, suffering self. We are married to our illusions.

We seem to be a world of little, separate, suffering selves. Thank God it's just a bad dream. God is All, and God is One. We live and move and have our being in God... and so we are One with each other and safe in the Oneness of God. My prayer for us all this Christmas is that we take time to be still and listen, to let God's Voice be heard in the silence. This One simple act will completely transform our perception of the world. "I will be still and listen to the Truth." What could be more important?

"Give Him your thoughts and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son, as proof of His eternal Love. Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 151, 14:1, 15:2