Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Lesson 125: “In quiet I receive God’s Word today.”
We are asked to come to quiet within. In the world, quiet is very often hard to come by. Peace seems like a distant and bleak hope. The world fills our minds with noise often and chaos. The ego thrives on making itself known and obvious. The ego makes sure it is heard. Our minds are often filled to the very highest of loud musings, stories about this or that. Our ego minds are very busy. They keep us entirely occupied so we never get to any level of quiet.
This is so we never happen upon God. If we are always full of the ego’s rants and raves we get addicted to the thinking and then we continue the cycle of insane desire for the drama and stories of the ego. This becomes our drug of choice because it furnishes us with the never-ending emotional highs and lows. The ego loves this intensity and the endless flow of busy musings.
Often the ego tells us that thoughts are harmless. How could a thought give us the same ammunition as a drug in our system? If you are used to having a full mind of thoughts, try for a period of days to simply stop the thinking and the stories. Notice the intensity of the desire to think. The ego seems to get fed by these thoughts. This is why our egos simply don’t want us to get out of the cycle of thinking. This creates incredible withdrawal and the ego will go to extraordinary lengths to keep us plugged into the words and thinking.
This is why the whole purpose of the Course is to provide us with a means to get out of our thinking mind. The ultimate goal of the Course is to teach us to live as much as we can possibly do to stay in the experience and feeling of the moment. And simply be informed when thought comes but not to dwell on the thinking or perpetuate it for the purpose of keeping it the forefront of our minds. Everything we learn in the Course is geared for this eventual goal. This can happen at any moment of course, but often takes us a little time to completely remove the blocks to love’s presence and be perfectly at peace in the now.
One of the helpful ways to achieve the Course’s goals is to practice quiet within our minds. When we do, this habit can be a helpful (though not totally necessary) benchmark for getting us to a place of communing with God as our primary Source for direction about how to navigate our days. When we make quiet it is often a helpful step to get us to listen more clearly and hear God more readily because our minds are not otherwise engaged with the stories of the world.
We can realize that creating quiet within also simply gives God the message that we are willing to listen to His Voice. God can go as far as we need Him in order to give us peace and joy when we simply show up with a willing heart to join Him. Further, this is the sure road to peace when we make willingness to allow God space within our hearts and quiet minds.