Lesson 106. Let me be still and listen to the truth.
(1) If you will lay aside the ego's voice, however loudly it may seem to
call, if you will not accept its petty gifts that give you nothing that
you really
want; if you will listen with an open mind, that has not told you what
salvation is; then you will hear the mighty Voice of truth, quiet in
power, strong in stillness, and completely certain in Its messages.
(2) Listen, and hear your Father speak to you through His appointed
Voice, which silences the thunder of the meaningless, and shows the way
to peace to those who cannot see. Be still today and listen to the
truth. Be not deceived by voices of the dead, which tell you they have
found the source of life and offer it to you for your belief. Attend
them not, but listen to the truth.
(3) Be not afraid today to circumvent the voices of the world. Walk
lightly past their meaningless persuasion. Hear them not. Be still today
and listen to the truth. Go past all things which do not speak of Him
Who holds your happiness within His Hand, held out to you in welcome and
in love. Hear only Him today, and do not wait to reach Him longer. Hear
one Voice today.
(4) Today the promise of God's Word is kept. 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. Prepare yourself for miracles today. Today
allow your Father's ancient pledge to you and all your brothers to be
kept.
(5) Hear Him today, and listen to the Word which lifts the veil that
lies upon the earth, and wakes all those who sleep and cannot see. God
calls to them through you. He needs your voice to speak to them, for who
could reach God's Son except his Father, calling through your Self? Hear
Him today, and offer Him your voice to speak to all the multitude who
wait to hear the Word that He will speak today.
(6) Be ready for salvation. It is here, and will today be given unto
you. And you will learn your function from the One Who chose it in your
Father's Name for you. Listen today, and you will hear a Voice which
will resound throughout the world through you. The bringer of all
miracles has need that you receive them first, and thus become the
joyous giver of what you received.
(7) Thus does salvation start and thus it ends; when everything is yours
and everything is given away, it will remain with you forever. And the
lesson has been learned. Today we practice giving, not the way you
understand it now, but as it is. Each hour's exercises should begin with
this request for your enlightenment:
<I will be still and listen to the truth.
What does it mean to give and to receive?>
(8) Ask and expect an answer. Your request is one whose answer has been
waiting long to be received by you. It will begin the ministry for which
you came, and which will free the world from thinking giving is a way to
lose. And so the world becomes ready to understand and to receive.
(9) Be still and listen to the truth today. For each five minutes spent
in listening, a thousand minds are opened to the truth and they will
hear the holy Word you hear. And when the hour is past, you will again
release a thousand more to pause to ask that truth be given them, along
with you.
(10) Today the holy Word of God is kept through your receiving it to
give away, so you can teach the world what giving means by listening and
learning it of Him. Do not forget today to reinforce your choice to hear
and to receive the Word by this reminder, given to yourself as often as
is possible today:
<Let me be still and listen to the truth.
I am the messenger of God today, My voice is His, to give what I
receive.>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The commentary on this lesson is an excerpt from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of
books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can
be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesson 106. "Let me be still and listen to the truth."
*The title itself is extremely important because -- as I have repeatedly
emphasized, reflecting the Course's emphasis -- the means by which we
have access to the truth and experience Jesus' love is letting go of our
egos. Recalling an earlier lesson, Jesus refers to the ego's voice in
our minds as "raucous shrieks" (W-pl.49.4.3). It's noise is always in
our minds, and being still means our decision maker recognizes it made a
mistake. Thus we choose against the ego thought system of specialness
and for its correction; against illusion and for the truth. This lesson
-- and the title itself -- is another reminder of the need for us to be
still to the ego, by shifting our investment from being right to being
happy.*
(1) "If you will lay aside the ego's voice, however loudly it may seem
to call, if you will not accept its petty gifts that give you nothing
that you really
want; if you will listen with an open mind, that has not told you what
salvation is; then you will hear the mighty Voice of truth, quiet in
power, strong in stillness, and completely certain in Its messages."
*This restates what I was just saying. We have all preferred the ego's
petty gifts of individuality and specialness over the glorious gift of
God, which Jesus holds out for us. His gift of forgiveness undoes the
ego through our realizing we all are one -- united in the dream by
sharing the need to return home, and united in our Identity as Christ.
The strength of the Holy Spirit's Presence and Jesus' love lie in their
quietness and stillness. It is the ego that needs to make a racket.
Whenever, for example, we are certain about something and need to let
everyone know how right, wonderful, and holy we are, we know it is the
ego speaking. The Voice of the Holy Spirit, with which we truly want to
identify, is quiet and does not call attention to itself. It simply is:
"quiet in power, strong in stillness, and completely certain in Its
messages." The need to be special and right gives away the fact that we
have chosen the ego as our teacher.*
(2:1) "Listen, and hear your Father speak to you through His appointed
Voice, which silences the thunder of the meaningless, and shows the way
to peace to those who cannot see."
*Again, those who are certain do not make commotions about themselves.
They do not make big deals about things, because in the certainty of
their mind's quietness they realize nothing here is important, including
one's individual and special self; only experiencing God's Love is
important, and there is nothing comparable to it here. Hearing the Holy
Spirit's Voice that speaks for that Love dissolves the meaningless self
and ends all conflict, lighting the way for our return to peace. The
"thunder of the meaningless" gives way to the simple silence of the
truth.*
(3:1-5) "Be not afraid today to circumvent the voices of the world. Walk
lightly past their meaningless persuasion. Hear them not. Be still today
and listen to the truth. Go past all things which do not speak of Him
Who holds your happiness within His Hand, held out to you in welcome and
in love."
*Jesus speaks this way because we fear that if we circumvent or avoid
the world's voices, we would disappear. These voices witness to our
seeming reality as separated and special individuals, and our fear of
turning from our authority and going against its truth is of our
vanishing into the "nothingness" of God, losing our individuality
forever. This, then, is the thought preventing us from reaching for His
Hand, symbolized for us by Jesus' presence on our journey home. As we
see repeatedly throughout A Course in Miracles, the way we say "yes" to
Jesus love is to say "no" to the ego thought system we believe is our
foundation. By thus going past the voices of the world -- our special
idols -- we reach for the "Hand" of God, hearing only His Voice that
speaks of the happiness and welcoming love awaiting us at the journey's
end.*
(4:1) "Today the promise of God's Word is kept. Hear and be silent."
*When <Word> is capitalized in the Course, it almost always is
understood as some expression of the Atonement principle -- the
correction for the error, the Holy Spirit, or forgiveness -- which
represents undoing the ego's thought system. By it's very nature as the
reflection of God's truth, it cannot <not> be true; its promise cannot
<not> be kept.*
(5:1-3) "Hear Him today, and listen to the Word which lifts the veil
that lies upon the earth, and wakes all those who sleep and cannot see.
God calls to them through you. He needs your voice to speak to them, for
who could reach God's Son except his Father, calling through your Self?"
*This is a theme we shall see repeated. It is based on the now -
familiar idea that God's Son is one. Jesus is not saying we should learn
these lessons of forgiveness, and then preach his gospel to the world.
Other systems teach that, but not this one. Indeed, we do not preach or
teach anything. We simply accept Jesus' love, which embraces every
seemingly separated mind in the Sonship, since minds are one. Mind
extends to mind, reflecting the original extension of God's Mind to the
Mind of Christ.
Again, we do nothing. If the love of Jesus motivates us, inspiring us to
do things in the world, we of course do them. Yet the core of A Course
in Miracles' curriculum involves stilling the ego's voices in our minds
and identifying with Jesus' words. Accepting his love, we allow it to
guide us in everything we think, feel, say, and do. In that sense the
world is healed, because it does not exist outside our minds.
Incidentally, we find here the adumbration of the beautiful and more
developed passage in the Introduction to the fifth review, where Jesus
says he needs us to hear his words and give them to the world, that it
be saved" (W-pI. rV.in.9:2-3).*
(5:4) "Hear Him today, and offer Him your voice to speak to all the
multitude who wait to hear the Word that He will speak today."
*We speak His Word in silence, because Love soundlessly speaks no words.
Since we believe we are bodies, however, the soundless word of love's
presence will often take shape in our behavior and words as it extends
through us. Yet it is not that inspires them. Our task is simply to get
in touch with that love. It then does the rest.*
(6:1-2) "Be ready for salvation. It is here, and will today be given
unto you."
*Salvation will be given us in the instant -- the holy instant -- we
choose to accept it, which we do by setting aside the ego's voice. Our
Teacher cannot wait to give us what we already have:
"The eagerness of the Holy Spirit to give you this is so intense He
would not wait, although He waits in patience. Meet His patience with
your impatience at delay in meeting Him. Go out in gladness to meet with
your Redeemer, and walk with Him in trust out of this world, and into
the real world of beauty and forgiveness." (T-17.II.8:3-5).
Knowing that beauty is what awaits our choice, who could not share the
Holy Spirit's eagerness? *
(7:1) "Thus does salvation start and thus it ends; when everything is
yours and everything is given away, it will remain with you forever."
*Salvation begins in our minds -- the source of the error -- and ends
there when we choose to correct the error and accept the Atonement, as
the early passage in the text explains:
"... the undoing process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless
within you because God placed it there. Your part is merely to return
your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over
to the Atonement in peace." (T.5.VII.6.4-5).
Needless to say, this idea of giving and receiving has nothing to do
with the world's understanding. When everything is mine and I accept
God's Love as my Identity, the Sonship is united in that Self. There is
no loss but only gain -- for <all>.*
(7:3 --8:2) "Today we practice giving, not the way you understand it
now, but as it is. Each hour's exercises should begin with this request
for your enlightenment:
<I will be still and listen to the truth.
What does it mean to give and to receive?>"
"Ask and expect an answer. Your request is one whose answer has been
waiting long to be received by you."
*The answer, again, is the Atonement principle. It is not a specific
answer that would have Jesus telling us, for example, to say this, do
that, or go there, but God's wordless Word. Even though the answer
awaits in our minds, we fear its implications. Therefore, we need these
practice periods as gentle reminders that if we see through the ego's
lies -- e.g., giving and receiving are different -- the resultant
stillness would allow us to hear the Holy Spirit's Voice correcting our
errors. Forgiveness enables us to be still, so we may receive the love
that is ours and the world's, with no loss to anyone.*
(9) "Be still and listen to the truth today. For each five minutes spent
in listening, a thousand minds are opened to the truth and they will
hear the holy Word you hear. And when the hour is past, you will again
release a thousand more to pause to ask that truth be given them, along
with you."
*Recall the term <thousand> in A Course in Miracles symbolizes a large
number. Thus thousands will receive this gift of Atonement when we
accept it for ourselves, reminding the Sonship, as did Jesus, that there
is another choice that can be made. It yet remains the Sonship's
decision, as it was ours, <when> to choose to accept God's Word.*
(10) "Today the holy Word of God is kept through your receiving it to
give away, so you can teach the world what giving means by listening and
learning it of Him. Do not forget today to reinforce your choice to hear
and to receive the Word by this reminder, given to yourself as often as
is possible today:
<Let me be still and listen to the truth.
I am the messenger of God today, My voice is His, to give what I
receive.>"
*Learning that giving and receiving are the same, we allow truth to be
itself. Letting go of grievances, memories of victimization, and
specialness needs entails no sacrifice or loss. To the contrary, the
process of forgiveness that is our gift to Jesus, as it is to the
Sonship, frees us to receive the memory of the love from which we had
separated. Without the barriers of hate to block love's flow, it gently
extends throughout the Sonship, delivering the happy message of God's
Word: the truth is here, and is ours for the asking.*
