Hearing One Voice

"The Holy Spirit is the Communication Link between God the Father and His separated Sons. If you will listen to His Voice you will know that you cannot either hurt or be hurt, and that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves." -- A Course in Miracles

"When you hear only One Voice you are never called on to sacrifice... the Holy Spirit is One, and anyone who listens is inevitably led to demonstrate His way for all." -- A Course in Miracles

What are the voices we listen to and follow every day? There are the voices of our parents, living or dead. The voices of our children are with us, whether we speak with them today or not. The voices of those we have disagreed with, argued with, judged in any way. The voices we hear in line at the store, the voices we hear on television or radio, the voices of revered teachers or mentors... the list goes on and on. Within the dream we call life, there is no unity in the voices we hear. They each seem to represent a unique and separate point of view. We listen with a sense of compulsion to the voices from the past, as if we owe them loyalty and our very lives. We listen with fascination to each new voice, especially the new ones... maybe this voice knows the way. Maybe this voice will give me something more.

Actually, there is absolutely no real difference in any of the voices we follow through the maze every day. Some dreams are more entertaining than others, some give us a temporary sense of power or vanity, some give us the illusion of love and acceptance, stories of specialness and exclusion, some give us feelings of powerlessness and need... but there is no real difference. A dream voice is still a dream voice, and not anything or anyone at all. Does this sound like a stretch to you? Then let's look at it another way, to see that it really is the way of it. Not one voice we hear in the world is true.

If you are trying to make a decision in your everyday life, and you research several different points of view about it, then finally make a decision based on the one that seems most valid, do you ever know for sure? Don't questions always arise when something happens that seems to contradict your choice (which it always will)? We stick by many of our choices stubbornly, because we have an addiction to being right about the voices we listen to... that is a law of the ego, the individual self. But A Course in Miracles tells us this is not our true will... and there is a way to listen to what we really want, in a unified fashion. We can listen to One Voice, the Voice of our True Self.

In A Course in Miracles, Jeshua ben Joseph says it this way: "The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense. His is the Voice that calls you back to Where You were before and will Be again. It is possible even 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."

Listening to One Voice, hearing only that One Voice... in all spiritual traditions we are given the same instruction, to love God, the One, with all our our heart and mind and soul and strength. Listening to something or someone is giving them the value of your attention, giving them credence. And there is only One Voice that is worth anything at all. Hearing that One Voice is the only thing worthy of total commitment and trust.

"It is possible even in this world to listen to One Voice. If you are part of God and the Sonship as One, you cannot be limited to the self the ego sees. His Voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know." -- A Course in Miracles