Together, We Light the Way

Teacher in Training

I have been working on 916: Teacher of God. As I am training to be a teacher of God, I am learning to listen closely to the Voice for God. I quickly discovered that I am not always aware of which voice I am listening to, and so I made awareness my first priority. It is really not hard to do this. There are only two voices. I am either listening to the ego’s voice, or I am listening to the Voice for God. It is always my choice as to which voice I listen to.

I recently experienced a perfect example of choosing which voice I want to listen to. I was talking to a friend about something concerning her, and suddenly she became very angry with me. Her voice got louder and higher with each word and her face became red and blotched. I tried to reason with her, but I quickly realized that it wasn?t going to work. Then I tried to calm her down with gentle words. That wasn?t helping either. Finally, I let her vent, and then watched in helplessness as she stomped out. I was completely dazed after the experience. I couldn?t figure out what I had done to bring on that outburst.

The more I thought about it, the more upset I became. I would be heartbroken for a moment as I thought about maybe losing a friend, and then I would become angrier and angrier as I thought about how unfair the attack was. I felt helpless. This is something that would affect me profoundly and yet, it seemed to be so completely out of my hands. As I think back over the incident, I can see that my ego couldn?t decide if I was a victim of someone?s unfair attack, or if I was guilty party, somehow causing my friend to be so upset.

My success at controlling my own actions varies wildly, and certainly I can?t control others, so there will be times when I am faced with situations like the one I just described. The question is, what will I choose to do about it? How will I choose to respond? Or, more accurately, what voice will I follow? It took me awhile to sort out the voices because my first reaction was very emotional. As I thought about it, I couldn?t see any way it was my fault or that I had done anything to bring it on. I couldn?t see anything I could have done to prevent it. It was just so darned unfair. I felt justified in being angry with my friend. I felt like a victim of her unfair rage and blame.

Unfortunately, while this felt right to me, it didn?t make me feel any better. I was still distraught. I needed to forgive, but it is not possible to forgive as long as I was seeing her as wrong. But how could I see it any differently? It was just so obviously her fault. Do you hear the ego?s voice in there, egging me on, trying to place blame; trying to make someone wrong? As long as I kept listening to the ego?s voice, I was going to stay in this conundrum. I finally tired of my misery and took a few moments to surrender my view of the situation to the Holy Spirit. I told Him how I was seeing this, and asked Him to look at it with me because, clearly, I didn?t know what any of it meant.

I felt immediately more peaceful and waited patiently for a new understanding. What I got was that I had been taking this personally. I was seeing what my friend did as an assault on me and on our long standing friendship. I was simultaneously blaming her, and accepting blame. I was feeling a need to fix it with no earthly idea how to do that. The Holy Spirit showed me that what happened didn?t actually have anything to do with me. He showed me that I was like a person who stepped in front of a runaway car. The car wasn?t out to get me; I was just in the way. My friend was like that car. She was in the grip of runaway emotions, and I got run down because I was there, not really because of anything I did.

It reminded me of times when I yelled at my husband or my child about some minor offense and afterward realized my anger had nothing to do with their action. I was upset about something entirely different, but they got caught in the cross fire. This was much the same. As I received this message from the Holy Spirit, I became calmer. It wasn?t my fault; I didn?t need to feel guilty. It was not my responsibility to fix anything. Whew! It was good thing to know this, because I was feeling a lot of pressure to do something that seemed impossible. It felt good to know I was relieved of that need.

Holy Spirit helped me to see that the pain wasn?t mine, but hers. I did not need to blame her for anything, because I did not need to feel threatened. I was able to see my friend as the child of God that she is. I began to feel love for her. I began to see that listening to the Voice for God was showing me there really was a different way to see this. I had received the gift of peace, and prayed that she would also. Soon, she came back over and sheepishly apologized for flying off the handle. She had been having a really bad day, and just took it out on me. I was so glad to see her and to know we were still friends. In this instance, I was a teacher of God. I taught her that as a child of God, I am unassailable and if I am unassailable, so is she.

I shudder to think how this would have ended if I had continued listening to the ego?s voice instead. I would have had no interest in forgiving, and would have felt justified in returning the attack. Maybe then, I would have considered ?forgiving? her, but it would not have been true forgiveness. It would have been a pale shadow of forgiveness in which I would have decided I was big enough to overlook her bad behavior, and her personal attack on me. I would have been making myself better than her and giving her a gift she didn?t deserve. That is not forgiveness. I would have been teaching her that she had indeed attacked me, and hurt me and that she deserved the same treatment. That would have been the ego?s sad lesson.

It is clear that making a decision to choose the Voice for God is the way to be a teacher of God. I am always teaching; in that I have no choice. I exercise my choice when I decide what I want to teach. I am so grateful that, in this instance at least, I chose well.

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