The Comforter
"African American Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (1929- 1968) told a story of once being terribly afraid. His life and those of his family had been threatened. One night when he could not sleep, he got up and went and sat in the dark at the kitchen table. He was thinking maybe he should call off a Civil Rights march. There in the middle of the night, in the dark, he began to pray. He asked, 'What am I supposed to do?' This is a very good prayer. Like all prayer, it is asking but it is also a way of saying, 'Holy Spirit, help me. I want to see this the way you do.' King then sat quietly and there in the middle of the night despite his terror, he said he heard a voice say, 'Do not be afraid.' He got up with a renewed sense of peace and went on with the march despite the threats that were converging upon him.
"I've been offering workshops on listening to inner guidance for several years. At each workshop, I ask folks to tell me about experiences in which they have felt as though they received some form of inner guidance, not intuitively, but things they thought they had actually heard. I wrote down what I was told and after many years, I collected hundreds of things people told me they heard, usually just a sentence or two. Sometimes, it was the same thing heard by someone else in yet another time and place. We tend to remember best those things which happen in dramatic life-changing moments of crash and burn, when we really needed help. We hear when we give up trying to figure life out and in desperation cry out for help. What is heard at this point is something very comforting and reassuring. It is never anything that would upset or disturb. As the angels said to the shepherds on the hillside at the time of the birth of Jesus, 'Fear not.'
"Here are some examples of what people said they heard:
• 'Haven't I always taken care of you?'
• 'I'm here to help you.'
• 'I've been waiting for you.'
• 'I have always loved you.'
• 'You are never alone.'
• 'You just need to be.'
• 'You need do nothing.'
• 'You are on the right track.'
• 'You are my beloved daughter in whom I am well-pleased.'
• 'You never did anything wrong.'
• 'There is another way to look at this.'
• 'This need not be.'
• 'Trust me!'
• 'It takes time to be healed.'
• 'There will always be enough.'
• 'Everything is going to be okay.'
• 'Let me handle this.'
"A man who was walking out of the front door of an office building where he had just been fired, cried out, 'Help!' and he heard, 'You just got help.'
"These are 'openings,' 'reassurances' which come during dramatic moments when there is need for comfort and support. This is not, however, the usual way in which the Holy Spirit speaks to us. When we really need help, sometimes the comforter comes during our 'hour of greatest need.' It is best, however, not to wait for crisis in order to be in communication. Nor do we hear an actual voice. The 'teacher,' 'guide,' 'healer' comes to us gently during more peaceful moments when studying, meditating, in our dreams, in doing the Workbook Lessons of the Course, just relaxing, perhaps while going for a walk, or perhaps when we're lying awake in bed in the morning."
God whose love is everywhere
can't come to visit unless you're not there.
— German Mystic, Angelus Silesius (1624-1677)
