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Chapter 5: Understanding the Holy Spirit’s Purpose

3. The Voice and the Call

Before the separation you did not need guidance. You knew as you will know again, but you do not know now. The Divine does not guide because It can share only perfect Knowledge. Guidance is evaluative because it implies that there is a right way and also a wrong way, one to be chosen and the other avoided. By choosing one, you give up the other. That is a state of conflict. Because Knowledge is sure, such a state means that Knowledge is not part of it.

The Divine is not “in” you, because spatial and temporal designations such as “in” and “out” and “before” and “after” are meaningless in Reality. In Reality you are Part of the Divine. When some of Its Children willed to be separate, the Divine gave them a Voice to speak for It, because It could no longer share Its Knowledge with these Children without the obstruction of their own split minds. Direct Communication was broken because they had made another voice through belief in another will.

Because the separated ones have chosen to be in a state of opposition, in which opposites are possible, the Voice of the Divine calls them both to remember and forget: to remember their true Home and forget their adopted one. As a result, there are choices that each must make. In the holy State, the will is free in the sense that its creative Power is unlimited, yet choice itself in that State is meaningless. Freedom to choose is the same Power or Strength as Freedom to create, but Its application is different. Choosing means divided will. The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. This way is “in” you because there is also another way that is outside of you.

The Divine did not leave Its Children comfortless even though some of them chose to leave the Divine, their true Source of Comfort. The voice they put in their minds was not the Voice of Divine Will, for which the Holy Spirit speaks. The Call to Return will always be stronger than the call to depart, but It speaks in a different way. The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because it is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand, because it does not seek control. It does not overcome, because it does not attack. It merely reminds. It is compelling only because of what It reminds you of. It brings to your mind the other Way, remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you have made for yourself. The Voice of the Divine is always quiet because it speaks of Peace. And Peace is stronger than conflict and battle and war, because It heals. Conflict is division, not increase. No one gains from strife.

“Of what profit is it for a person to gain even the entire world if this causes them to lose their own soul?” means that if a person listens to the wrong voice, they have lost sight of their own spirit, or soul. No one can lose their spirit, but a person can choose not to know it. In such a case it is temporarily lost to them, until they choose correctly.

The Holy Spirit is the right guide in choosing. It is the part of your mind that always speaks for the right choice, because It speaks for the Divine. It is your remaining Communication Link with the Divine, which you can interrupt but cannot destroy. The Holy Spirit is the Way in which Divine Will can be done on Earth as It is in Heaven. Both Heaven and Earth are “in” you, because the call of each is in your will, and therefore in your mind.

The Voice of the Divine comes from your own inner Altar to Divine Will. This Altar is not a thing. It is a devotion. But you have other devotions now. Your divided devotion has given you the only two voices available to your mind – the Holy Spirit and the ego – and you must choose at which altar, that is, which devotion, you will to serve. The call you answer now is an assessment because it is a decision. The decision itself is very simple. It is made on the basis of which call you decide is worth more to you.

My mind will always be like your whole mind, because we were created as equals. It was only my decision that gave me all Power in Heaven and Earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision for yourself. The will for this decision is the will to share it, because the decision itself is the decision to share. It is made by giving, and is therefore the one act of the split mind that resembles true creation.

The role of ideals, goals, and models in the learning process is universally understood, and you know the importance of the models and examples you value and choose to follow in determining what you will to learn. I am your model for the decision to learn awakening. By deciding for the Divine, I showed you that this decision can be made, and that you can make it. I promised you that the Mind that made the decision for me is also in you, and that you can let It change you just as It changed me. This Mind is unequivocal because It hears only one Voice, and answers only in one Way to this Voice and Its Call.

You are the Light of the world with me. True rest and the healing that it brings does not come from sleeping, but from awakening. The Holy Spirit is the Call to awaken and be glad. The world is very tired because it is the idea of weariness. Our task is the joyous one of awakening it to the Call for the Divine. Everyone will answer the Call of the Holy Spirit, because otherwise the Divine Family could not be One again, and it is the Divine’s Will that Its Family be One. What better vocation could there be for any Part of the Realm than to restore It to the perfect Integration that can make It whole?

Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you, and teach your sisters and brothers to listen to the Voice of the Divine as I am teaching you. When you are tempted to listen to the wrong voice, call on me to remind you how to heal by sharing my decision and making it stronger through sharing it. As we share this goal, we increase its power to attract all Members of the Divine Family, and to bring them back into the Oneness in which they were created.

“My yoke is easy and my burden is light” means let us join together, for my message is Light. I came to your mind because you had grown vaguely aware of the fact that there is another way, or another voice. Because in seeking this other way you gave an invitation to the Holy Spirit, I have been able to come to provide a model for how to think miraculously, which is being carefully presented to you in this Course.

Part of psychology has become the study of behavior, but no one denies the basic law that behavior is a response to motivation, and motivation is will. I have enjoined you to behave as I behaved, that is, to decide as I decided, but we must respond to the same Mind to do this. This Mind is the Holy Spirit, Whose Will is for the Divine always. Spirit teaches you how to keep me as the model for your thought, and behave or decide like me as a result.

The Power of our joint Motivation is beyond belief but not beyond accomplishment. What we can accomplish together has no limits because the Call for the Divine is the Call to the Limitless. Child of the Divine, my message is for you, to hear and give away as you answer the Holy Spirit within you.