I love you. Listen *for* My Voice

And then listen *to* It

One word Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is Love. - Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus

Sometimes, we seem mindless. We seem to hear nothing. But often, and certainly if we listen, we hear voices in our minds. And not just in our minds.

If you listen carefully, you will hear the voices. We call some of those voices “thinking.” But most are not thinking. Some are judging. Some are arguing. Some are mindlessly repeating what they’ve heard.

It’s possible that experienced meditators can quiet the voices in their minds entirely. But perhaps they haven’t silenced them—they’ve stopped listening. That might be a good thing. It might not be. I don’t know.

I cannot control the voices I hear in my mind—or the ones around me. I cannot choose to silence them. But I can direct my attention toward or away from them.

And I can stop reading news.

I can choose which voices to listen for and which voices to listen to.

Some voices tell me that the world is a horrible place; they say I am doomed to suffer and then to die.

Sometimes, I cannot choose not to hear them; they are so loud.

But I can choose not to listen to them.

I can choose to listen for Voices that speak of love and hope.

I can choose to listen for Voices that speak Truth as I understand Truth and speak of Love and never of fear.

Such a Voice is within me, and I have heard it many times.

Sometimes, that Voice seems quiet.

Sometimes, I must listen carefully to hear it.

Outside my mind, the voices of what we call “the news” speak almost exclusively of fear, anger, damage, and despair.

Sometimes, I hear friends' voices telling me what they worry about and encouraging me to worry with them.

But we are not without power.

We all have the power to choose.

We may not always be able to choose what we hear, but we can always choose what we listen for and what we listen to.]

What I do

I listen for the Voice for Love, which is the Voice for Peace. I have heard it before. I can hear it again when I listen for it.

The more I listen for it, the more easily I hear it, and the clearer its message.

That Voice reminds me that perceptions of the world are not reality.

That Voice reminds me that judgements and opinions are even further removed from reality than the perceptions they are based on.

That Voice reminds me that it may seem that the lion taking the life of the antelope is a demonstration of the cruelty of nature and that people killing others is a demonstration of the cruelty and sinfulness of humanity.

But those are judgments based on perceptions of small bits of reality in tiny moments of time, separated from the full context of reality.

Can such judgements be relied on?

Perhaps.

But perhaps what is happening would not support those judgements if we could see the whole of reality.

Perhaps if we saw more of reality, we would see peace and a way to more peace.

The Voice I listen for and listen to tells me peace is underneath all apparent conflict.

It is possible to see differently.

I don’t know if that idea is true, but I do know this:

When I apply that idea, I often see peace or the desire for peace beneath apparent conflict.

That Voice reminds me that there are people whose job is to look for fear and anger, not love and peace. They get paid to find what will make people angry and afraid.

And what they seek, they find.

But it is not reality.

The Voice asks me to look through my own eyes, rather than theirs.

It suggests I do these things instead.

It suggests that I imagine One who could see all of reality, not just bits, and imagine what I would see through Her eyes.

If the world is burning, that Voice asks me if I want to “add fuel to that fire.”

Or, it asks me if I want to mix metaphors and “pour oil on troubled waters.”

“Right, so someone can set the oil on fire?” asks another voice.

“There’s always someone…” I say.

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This was inspired by friends who were studying ACIM Lesson 39, “God’s Voice Speaks to Me Throughout the day,” on the day I wrote this.

And Inspired by the Source of Inspiration.

Thanks for reading this essay.