Hungry like the wolf
A reflection on Lesson 49 from A Course in Miracles: God's Voice speaks to me all through the day.
Audio of this article:
Several years ago, I owned a house in Atlanta that I rented out. One day, a woman called inquiring about renting the home and in the back of my head, like someone standing behind me, I heard a Voice say, “Tell her it’s rented. Tell her it’s rented.”
“It’s still available,” I heard my voice say into the phone.
“Arrrghh!” the Voice behind me said in frustration.
Several months later I was in a battle to evict this renter and had to repair the damage she had done to the house during her short, but traumatic, residency.
Some may say that the voice I heard was “intuition.” Call it what you will, but I say it was the Voice of God trying to save me from a world of hurt. The voice I did listen to was the ego’s, because it wanted the house rented and a steady income from the property. Guess which voice was right?
I suppose I needed to learn that lesson about which voice I should be heeding – the still small Voice of certain knowledge, or the loud ego voice that speaks first and can lead us to make some bad choices – even if they become learning opportunities.
We all have the two voices in our heads. It’s like the old Cherokee story about the two wolves that are fighting within us. One represents all of our ego’s attributes of pride, greed, envy, malice, anger, fear, lies and a feeling of either inferiority or superiority, depending on the circumstances.
The other wolf, of course, represents Spirit’s attributes of love, compassion, joy, peace, humility, generosity, empathy, and faith. Of course, as the tale goes, the one you feed will ultimately be victorious.
The story is effective, but it’s not quite what A Course tells us is happening within us. Our ego tells us we are at war with the other Voice in our head. Spirit, however, is never at war with anyone or anything – especially not the ego, which it didn’t create and doesn’t even recognize, since it is an illusion that we created for ourselves.
It simply speaks Truth in all situations and invites us to listen. Love is never in a battle with anything. As A Course tells us in Chapter 4, “Love does not conquer all things, but it does set things right.”
“Feeding” the Spirit then is simply a matter of tuning in to its message. It’s always broadcasting at a higher frequency than our ego. If we turn off K-EGO and tune in to K-GOD, we’ll find the strength we need – because Source is our strength – to listen more deeply to this frequency of thought than the lower frequency messages of the ego that drain us of our ability to be a channel of love for the world.
When we tune in to the ego’s frantic ranting about the world around us, we lose our sense of peace, we lose our calm center and are easily swayed by the ego to be defensive, cruel, selfish, and fearful. In those moments, when we are caught up feeding the wolf of the ego, we need to take a deep breath, pause, and adjust the dial within our inner communication system.
If we can make it a habit to pause when the ego begins its inevitable rant about the world, then we will find ourselves tuning in more often to the sound of the calm, restful and certain Voice for God. When we do, we find that our ego thoughts dissolve into the nothingness from which they came.
That, Persian poet Hafiz says, should bring us joy:
“A thousand times I have ascertained and
found it to be true:
“The affairs of this world are really nothing
into nothing.
“Still though, we should dance.”
Music for the Journey:
“Hungry Like the Wolf” - Duran Duran
I invite you to dance!
About the Motley Mystic:
The Motley Mystic is an online community for people who have realized that the truth speaks with many voices. There is no one religion, philosophy, institution or dogma that captures the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. No one needs to swear allegiance to one line of thought or belief to discern Truth, because Love is the only thing that’s real. That’s what we explore at the Motley Mystic - all the tools and strategies we need to remove our barriers to Love and live fully as our true, Divine Self.
Candace Chellew is the founder of Motley Mystic as well as Jubilee! Circle, an interfaith spiritual community in Columbia, S.C. She is also the author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians published in 2008 by Jossey-Bass and the founder and senior editor emeritus of Whosoever: An Online Magazine for LGBTQ People of Faith. She is also a musician and avid animal lover.
Still, though, we should dance. I am listening to the Voice.