I grew up when the only option for music outside my sparse album collection was listening to the radio. Not satellite radio with hundreds of stylistic choices - rather, just two bands of modulated frequencies: AM and FM.
Stations on the AM dial could be received from great distances, enabling vast imaginary travels for my youthful ears. But when it came to sonically sweet strings and cymbals and saxes, nothing could touch FM. The crystal clear musical nuances of high-fidelity stereo harmonized in my head. It was glorious.
Until the signal was lost or interrupted.
That's the nature of communication, particularly wireless: dependability can be sketchy. Inclement weather, power outages, and interference wreak havoc. In one moment I had the dial set perfectly to receive the rapturous melodies, yet the next required readjustment to reacquire the signal.
And so I kept on scanning the dial to find clear stations with climactic music.
Which I think makes for a perfect metaphor to discuss the mind’s voice to which we’re tuned.
The ego, and our life, represent the intermittent broadcasts: sometimes they sound good, but it doesn’t last. We keep tuning the dial over and over and over trying to find something pleasing. But it’s mostly crap. And we’re rarely satisfied.
We bemoan our situation without ever realizing there is one station that is perfectly pitched. Its transmission is never interrupted, continuously playing the most sublime sound imaginable. Without commercials! The station is WGOD, and we can listen in whenever we’d like.
The problem is we don’t. We don’t listen in, and we don’t like.
We prefer the ego’s playlist. It offers far more variety of tempos, genres, and emotional swings. We can make requests, and the DJ calls out our name! Even though the music is often discordant, the talk programs obnoxious, and the signal quality spotty - the drama, excitement, and anticipation of what might come next keep us hooked.
In fact, we are so smitten with this WEGO station that we’ve completely forgotten there’s another alternative. And when we’re inevitably let down - tired of endless scans of the dial - we know of no other transmission.
Yet WGOD is always there. Patiently waiting for us to tune in.
As we read in A Course in Miracles:
The Communication Link that God Himself placed within you, joining your mind with His, cannot be broken. You may believe you want It broken, and this belief does interfere with the deep peace in which the sweet and constant communication God would share with you is known. Yet His channels of reaching out cannot be wholly closed and separated from Him. (T-13.XI.8)
When we don’t hear the voice for God - that soothing, peaceful, embracing warmth - it’s not because it isn’t there. Rather, we’re tuned in elsewhere, namely, to the ego. Yet a simple station switch solves everything.
Join me in Thursday’s class where we’ll explore how we can tune our awareness into that infinitely pleasing, static free “Communication Link.” I look forward to seeing you then.