Our Road Less Travelled

Bad noise is everywhere, mostly masquerading as good noise. After all, we ‘need’ to keep in touch with the news don’t we? We ‘have’ to listen to that ghastly music on the phone as we hold for the customer service we are seeking. And it’s only polite to listen to that person moaning about the state of the world after church or at the coffee morning (worse if it’s a relative who whinges at you regularly and has no interest in solutions!).

The trouble is, we learn very early to drown out both Spirit and our own needs and desires in that noise. We will involve ourselves in ‘busy work,’ which is an alternative version of bad noise; we will binge-watch a TV show we or spend half the day on social media.
 
Bad noise is very clever; it is an archetypical form of resistance. Resistance to what? To that still, small Voice inside that speaks only for our own good and happiness and which will suggest our taking the road less travelled; our road, not anyone else’s.
 
Did you know that the algorithms in websites like YouTube are set so that if you follow on from one video to the next, the system will show you steadily more and more negative stuff? That’s because the creators of the algorithm know that human brains are wired like Velcro for fear and Teflon for happiness. We still think there’s a sabre-tooth tiger out there waiting to eat us and we naturally seek out any cause of fear that we can find so we can protect ourselves.
 
Is this healthy? Not really! What’s the solution? Ah, that’s the difficulty, because the solution requires discipline and bad noise is just the opposite of that.
 
Grace flows to every being in the Universe, naturally. It cannot be deserved; it goes to everyone. But you can tell the people who have blocked it off and those who are open to drinking this Divine benediction. The latter are the happy ones. Yes, they have their issues too but their base station is peace of mind.
 
Today, allow yourself the discipline of taking just two minutes of saying, ‘I am open to Grace. I am willing to receive’ and see what happens…. You may well be amazed.

Rev. Maggy Whitehouse