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PROLOGUE: THE
NATURE OF THE OTHER VOICE
written by
Brent Haskell
http://tinyurl.com/9zro4 (pdf version) It is essential, even
critical, in our quest for the peace of God that we come to an accurate
understanding of what the Course is actually saying about thought itself. Very
early in the Workbook lessons, the Course begins to develop its theme that the
thoughts of consciousness, the thoughts of which we are aware, are NOT our real
thoughts, and furthermore, do not resemble our real thoughts in any way.
In Lesson #4, entitled "These thoughts do not mean anything..." (1), the Course tells us, while we are selecting the subjects for the day's lesson, not to be afraid to use "good" thoughts as well as "bad." For "None of them represents your real thoughts, which are being covered up by them. The 'good' ones are but shadows of what lies beyond...The 'bad' ones are blocks to sight...You do not want either. This is a major exercise..." (2) It is important that we hear that last sentence: "THIS IS A MAJOR EXERCISE." In other lessons, the same important idea is repeated. Lesson #10 makes it clear that all the thoughts of which we are aware, or of which we become aware, are not our real thoughts. (3) Lesson #45 is even more specific as it informs us that there is no connection between our real thoughts and the thoughts we think we think (or the thoughts of which we are aware). It also is firm about stating that what we think are our real thoughts do not resemble our real thoughts in any respect. (4) Lesson #15 refers to the thoughts "we think we think," which are not thoughts, but which are simply images, and as such are actually nothing at all, since they are nothing but images that we have made. (5) This theme is mentioned a number of other times, all with the same intent, which is to help us realize that the thoughts of which we are aware, the thoughts of consciousness, are NOT our real thoughts. Furthermore, it is important that we remember that being aware of this fact is a MAJOR exercise within the teaching plan of the Course. As it becomes clear that the thoughts of consciousness are not our real thoughts, it behooves us to explore what the Course says about consciousness itself. Although the Course mentions the word but a few times, it does tell us that "Consciousness, the level of perception, was the first split introduced into the mind after the separation, making the mind a perceiver, rather than a creator. Consciousness is correctly identified as the domain of the ego." (6) As we probe this passage, we hear it telling us that consciousness, or the thoughts we think we think, or the thoughts of which we are aware, is actually the domain of the ego. Therefore, as long as we function at the level of conscious thoughts, we are constrained to the level of the ego. Yet every Course student learns early on that going beyond the ego is one of the primary goals of the curriculum of the Course. This can perhaps seem to imply that we should function, here in this world, without conscious awareness, or without thinking. This would seem a great challenge, indeed. Elsewhere in the Course, we find another important passage. "In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice, always between two choices or two voices. Consciousness is the receptive mechanism, receiving messages from above or below, from the Holy Spirit or the ego. Consciousness... cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly." (7) There is one other quote from the Course which needs to be mentioned. In Lesson #131, as it describes for us how to reach the truth, we find these words, "... and we will ask to see the rising of the real world to replace the foolish images that we hold dear, with true ideas arising in place of thoughts that have no meaning, no effect, and neither source nor substance in the truth." (8) So subtle, so brief in its passing, but here is the Course stating that our thoughts (the ones we wish to let go in favor of truth) have no meaning, and NO EFFECT...This seems to state that our thoughts (the thoughts of consciousness), in having no effect, have no creative power at all. If this be true, and we want to change our lives or our world by changing our thoughts, we must realize that the level of conscious thought is not only NOT the level at which changes can be made, but that conscious thoughts actually have no power to change anything. Based upon my own understanding of the message of the Course, and upon the Jeshua materials I have received, I now propose to explain how all of this makes sense, and how it fits into a unified whole which is fully compatible with the teachings of the Course. What follows has had a major impact on my own life. It has also led me to a better understanding of The Other Voice, which is the title I was given for this book. I offer it here in the hope that it may bless the reader's life as it has blessed my own. The Course speaks often of our invulnerability, and how it is that nothing can happen to us by chance or accident. (9) This must even apply to the making of this world of illusion. It is important that we be able to embrace the fact that the production of this world was undertaken from within a state of full awareness, and that everything that seems to happen here is by careful design. No mistakes have been made, and no blunders have caused us to seem to be trapped here in space and time. Granted, it SEEMS otherwise. But that, too, must be part of the design. If it were not so, we would not be invulnerable, and the Course would be in error. Thus it is that we desired to make a world which would have the APPEARANCE of accomplishing the impossibility of separation, all the while being fully aware that it was not possible to actually do so. This demanded a scheme whereby we could design this world of separation, somehow forget that we had done so, and then look upon that same design and believe it to be reality. We must realize that this required creative genius at its best. And we have done a masterful job of making just such a world. The manner in which we did this is essentially the same as the way we create our own sickness, and which the Course describes very well in the second through the fourth paragraphs of Lesson #136. This world was not an accident. It is a carefully laid plan of self-deception, whose purpose is to hide reality. We made it up, then devised a clever plan for forgetting that we had done so, and then proceeded to look upon that plan and seem to experience it as being real. The means by which we were able to do this is most clever indeed. We first imagined that it was possible to actually BE what we cannot be, which is separate from God, and from Life Itself. In the next instant, in order for that imagined notion to survive, it was necessary for us to seem to split our mind. This simply means that there had to be a part of the mind that was not aware of the carefully laid plan of separation, while another part was fully aware of that same plan and its guaranteed outcome, which had to be the eventual return of the mind to wholeness, or the end of the dream of separation, if you will. ("This is a required Course." [10]) In order to do this, we devised projection and perception. We made up a screen onto which we could project whatever we wanted to seem to experience in this world of illusion. We then projected the chosen images onto that screen, and in an instant split our awareness so that part of our awareness could focus on the screen and pretend that the images were of reality, without remembering where the images came from in the first place. This was done by the selfsame mind that was now looking upon what it had projected. We could not actually BE separate, but we could manage to look upon the set of projected images and pretend that they represented something real. However, the images are not real, and can never be so. Thus it is that, in reality, this world never happened. The exciting and possibly alarming insights are the ones that follow. We must ask the nature of the screen onto which mind projected its dream of illusion, and the nature of the images which it chose to project there. And this is the answer. THE SCREEN WHICH MIND CREATED AND ONTO WHICH IT CHOSE TO PROJECT ITS ILLUSIONS IS CONSCIOUSNESS ITSELF. AND THE IMAGES WHICH IT PROJECTED ARE NONE OTHER THAN THE THOUGTS WHICH DWELL IN THAT CONSCIOUSNESS. That is why the Course accurately states that consciousness is the RECEPTIVE mechanism. (7) For it is simply the screen onto which mind projects that which it would perceive. That is why consciousness was the first split introduced into the mind after the separation was imagined, making the mind a perceiver, rather than a creator. (6) And that is why our thoughts here are nothing but images we have made. (5) And that is also why the Course tells us that "perception involves an exchange, or translation, which knowledge does not need." (11) The exchange, or translation, is the process whereby an image is projected, the process is instantly forgotten, and the selfsame mind then views what it projected the moment before. And, finally, that is why the thoughts of which we are aware, the thoughts of consciousness, are not our real thoughts, and truly have nothing to do with the real thoughts (4), which do and must reflect the creative power of mind itself. After we arrive at a point where we are able to open to the truth of the preceding paragraphs, we have arrived at the realization that the thoughts of which we are aware are not our real thoughts. We also realize that ALL of those thoughts must lie within the domain of the ego, and that to dwell upon those thoughts in our search for truth is to try to discover truth while looking through the mask which was designed to hide that same truth. We then realize that there must be a way to move beyond that mask, wherein we shall discover truth and the peace of God. The way in which we shall move beyond the thought system of the ego, beyond the trappings of conscious thought, is to revisit an above-mentioned passage from the Course, the one which tells us that the ONLY freedom we have here is the freedom of choice, and that that choice is ONLY to which voice we shall choose to listen. (7) We then need to ask how it is that we do, or can, choose between the two voices. For it is only by listening to the "Other" Voice that we can discover the truth and peace of God. We are told that the ego and the Holy Spirit suffer from a complete failure of communication (12). The reason for this is that the two operate within completely different thought systems, one whose fundamental premise is the possibility and existence of separation, and the other whose fundamental premise is that separation cannot, and never did, exist at all. If we harbor even an inkling that God is in any way separate from us, we are choosing the thought system of the ego, and we cannot truly hear the Voice of the Holy Spirit. As a simple example of this, if we would pray to God, and ask God to grant us the requests we make of Him, we are making the subtle assumption that God is SEPARATE from us. We are assuming that God's Will might be DIFFERENT from our own, making it necessary for us to somehow influence God so that He will hear and answer us. Thus, we are speaking with the voice of the ego, and the Holy Spirit cannot answer. For It cannot bridge the complete communication gap which exists between Its own thought system and the imagined thought system of the ego. We also remember that the realm of conscious thought is the domain of the ego. (6) If we insist upon dwelling in that domain and trying to "figure out" the message of the Holy Spirit, we are doomed to failure. For all of our "figuring out," all of our analyzing, all of our hours of debating and discussing are, by definition, constrained to the realm of the ego. And it must be in an arena where these processes cease that we can at last hear the" Other" Voice, which is really the Voice of the Holy Spirit, the Voice of God. Thus we come abreast of a most important question. How is it that we can truly listen, and therefore truly hear, the Other Voice? How can we, while we yet dwell in this world of space and time, hear the Voice of God? The answer is to be found in the Course itself, and in one of its most beautiful and moving paragraphs: "Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God." (13) It is clear from this passage that the Course is advising us to let go of all our conscious thoughts, concepts, and judgments. For to do this is to divest ourselves of the ego and its thought system. And it is in doing just that, that we are able to truly listen. The fact remains, however, that for most of us, so long steeped in the belief that our consciousness is a vital and integral part of what we are, taking this step can seem frightening indeed. That is because letting go of consciousness is the same as letting go of the ego. And we have designed this world so that it SEEMS as if the ego is what we are. Thus letting go of the ego SEEMS tantamount to choosing to die, a step which most of us do approach with fear. For we cherish being alive, and do not desire to cease to exist, above all by our own choice. Listening to the Other Voice, however, is far from frightening. It is the most rewarding, the most meaningful, and the most beautiful experience we can afford ourselves here in this world. It is also the only way to understand and experience the peace of God. When we make the choice to listen, we do it by allowing our minds to become still. In this place of silence, in the absence of our conscious thoughts, the ego is no longer present, and there is an immediate sense of increased peace. What then begins to appear is an awareness, a presence, which defies definition. But arising out of this awareness, we discover what might be called a knowing, or a certainty. It is this knowing that blesses us with an awareness of what to do, where to go, and what to say, as we live our lives here in this world. The awareness that arises from out of our silence can and does translate into our knowing how to live our lives here, even though this world of space and time is but a world of illusion. But this same awareness can and does cause us to see the world differently from the way we had seen it before. What this literally means is that it is possible to live life here in this world, to be able to function within the realm of perception, and yet to see the world through the eyes of the Holy Spirit, rather than through the eyes of the ego. That is why the Course has stated that consciousness, although it cannot transcend the realm of perception, can become aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. (7) This state is called true perception, and can only be reached by listening to the Other Voice. If our only choice here is to which voice we shall listen, and we desire to hear the Voice of the Holy Spirit, we seem to come upon a significant dilemma. If the way to hear the Other Voice is by quieting our conscious minds, by ceasing to think these unreal thoughts, then what role does A Course in Miracles play? What role does this book play? Do not the books, the tapes, the lectures, the study groups, all demand that we read, study, and discuss in order to learn this Course? And is not all of that confined to the domain of the ego, as the Course tells us? Is it not contradictory for Jeshua to have given us the Course in the first place? In short, is there a place for the study of this material? And how does such study relate to being able to hear the Other Voice? Insofar as consciousness CAN be trained to see the real world, there must exist avenues whereby that training can be accomplished. All of those avenues relate to our willingness to open our conscious awareness to the truth. This is the same as willingly opening our minds to a different way of looking at the world. Unless we are willing to entertain a different vision of life as we know it, AND A DIFFERENT VISION OF WHAT WE OURSELVES ARE, we cannot escape the thought system of the ego, and we cannot discover the peace of God. First, there must exist within us the awareness of the truth of God. We could not separate ourselves from that truth, even though we might vainly imagine that it be possible. When we open to new ideas, such as we meet when we read the Course or books like this one, we experience a quiet resonance within which affirms the presence of truth. Every one of the old (ego) thoughts which we desire to preserve can only serve as a block to this process. But as we truly open, WITH A WILLING ANTICIPATION OF A NEW WAY OF SEEING, ideas such as we meet in the Course and this book will, because of the feeling they generate within us, tell us that we are approaching the center of truth. Then when we enter the silence and return, the awareness we bring back will be magnified by the presence of those ideas we had encountered and had chosen to admit into our consciousness. Secondly, we are not bodies. Rather we are mind exercising its creative power. It is mind which projects onto the screen of consciousness that which it would perceive. And since this is a required Course, part of the design MUST BE the eventual projection onto consciousness of the truth. Therefore, part of the original design of this world included the planned introduction into consciousness, over the span of time, of the awareness of the truth. Jesus established the Atonement by being the first person to bring into human consciousness a life which was fully in tune with the truth of God. And he asked those who had ears to hear to listen. The Course, and for those who choose to believe so, Journey Beyond Words and this book, are some of the many other vehicles through which mind introduces the truth into consciousness, all for the purpose of bringing mind back to its original state of wholeness. As we read, as we listen, as we study A Course in Miracles, or Journey Beyond Words, or this book, or any of the many other sources available, we are choosing to make fertile the ground upon which the Other Voice will plant the seeds of truth. Therefore, such endeavors are appropriate indeed for those whose guidance is to follow that path. However, it is most important that we not lose sight of the fact that we shall not understand the truth of God, nor experience His peace, until we choose to quiet our minds and listen to the message of the Other Voice. We hear that Voice by entering the silence, by choosing to listen with openness of heart, with the anticipation of remembering, and with a willingness to accept a new vision of who and what we are. And out of the silence shall come the pathway to the peace of God, which truly does pass all understanding.
REFERENCES FROM A COURSE IN MIRACLES
http://tinyurl.com/9a5su - other words from
"The Other Voice"
http://tinyurl.com/566ca - "Journey Beyond
Words"
The inner light can answer any of this world's queries and resolve any of its problems. Beyond all of these concerns, the inner light will show you who you are and your relationship to all...and bring you an understanding of love and peace that transcends ordinary human thought processes. Discover what it truly means to "love one another" and to "see peace." YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
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