II. The Voice for God, Paragraph 6
10-9-13
6 The Holy Spirit calls you both to remember and to forget. You have chosen to be in a state of opposition in which opposites are possible. As a result, there are choices you must make. In the holy state the will is free, so that its creative power is unlimited and choice is meaningless. Freedom to choose is the same power as freedom to create, but its application is different. Choosing depends on a split mind. The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. God did not leave His children comfortless, even though they chose to leave Him. The voice they put in their minds was not the Voice for His Will, for which the Holy Spirit speaks.
Before the split mind choices were meaningless. This is because in our true state the will is free and our creative power is unlimited. But now, because of the split mind, there are opposites and we must make choices. We made a voice that was not real, and we believed that voice, so we were given another Voice. Now there are two voices and we must choose the one we would listen to.
The ego voice that we made and believed will lead us deeper into the illusion and further from Love. The Voice given us by God will help us wake up from the dream of separation and remind us of the truth of who we are. It will lead us to Heaven and restore the memory of True Self. There is no option to not make a choice. This choice must be made every moment of every day.
When I was depressed it was because I chose to believe the ego voice. When I made another choice, I didn’t even realize I was doing so. It is only in retrospect that I see clearly the moment I chose differently. I should say it was the moment I began to choose differently, because it required many choices to let go of the beliefs that made a world where depression is possible. I still make that choice every day.
My life began to change when I began to question my beliefs. Up until that point I just assumed that depression was unavoidable for me. It was my fate. I am sure that beneath that belief there was the belief that I was unworthy and being punished by God for my sins. But after I began to study the Course I learned to doubt the idea of a judgmental, punishing God. I began to doubt my unworthiness. Eventually, I began to doubt the inevitability of depression as a way of life.
I did not set out to rid myself of depression. I didn’t even believe that was possible. But as I questioned my beliefs about God and my nature, I realized that my mind was sick. I learned to ask that my mind be healed, and the miracle occurred. Just as a sick mind projected a sick brain, a healed mind projected a healed brain and the symptoms were gone.
The ego still offers me the option of being depressed. I can see the appeal now. I used to feel sorry for myself and expected others to be sorry for me, too, and that pity was the way I felt loved. When the depression was strong, I could opt out of life and I had that perfect excuse to do so. I was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed, and no one expected me to. I was so special.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I loved my depression story. A friend had a huge bottle of pills that she kept for the moment the depression was too great to bear. That bottle of pills was her way out if she couldn’t stand life anymore. One day she gave them to me because she didn’t need them anymore. I took them with gratitude and kept them as my failsafe.
You would think that my first reaction would to be to beg her for her secret of getting out of the depression, but instead, I just took the pills and was happy to have them. I believed that death was my only escape and I wasn’t interested in healing as an escape. I loved that story of depression and I wasn’t giving it up. That should have clued me into how sick my mind was, but it would take more suffering for me to reach the point that I began to ask for a different way.
It took time for me to make a different choice, but always, even when I didn’t believe in the possibility of another choice, that other choice was waiting patiently for me. I have friends who chose the bottle of pills, or some other way out, who never made the choice for life. What about them? The cycle of birth and death will just spit them back into the illusion again, and they will have another chance to choose the Voice for God.
Failure is not an option. We are the Son’s of God. We cannot be destroyed, not even by our own hand. We can only dream of destruction. We can dream of suffering as long as we can stand it, but eventually we will dream of God, and then He will lift us up. He waits only for us to make that choice.
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