"Pray for Sean to arrive!"

It was perhaps 1982. Bonnie Brightstar and myself were told by my inner voice to rent a white house with white walls in Eugene, Oregon and the work would begin. We didn't know what work. We found the house fairly quickly and started holding inner hearing practice sessions every morning. Before the first week was over, a single mom with two young children who lived next door began coming over and enthusiastically joining in our sessions. We all took turns listening inside and speaking aloud what we were hearing inside.

Within a couple of weeks we were told by our inner voice, "Go to the Unity Church this Sunday. A new student will show up." We did as told and sure enough a young woman approached us after the Unity service and asked us a few questions about what we were doing. Then she said, "You are the ones I've been looking for. I was involved in a fairly intense spiritual work in Tucson, Arizona and I heard guidance to relocate to Eugene. I was told by my inner voice I would find a small group to work with." This new student moved into the house with us within a week.

As you can imagine, more students came. It wasn't long before we had about 12 students sitting in a circle on the living room floor every morning at 10 a.m. doing inner hearing practice. They all began hearing more and more clearly with practice.

After a month or so one of the students heard inside, "Pray for Sean to arrive!"

I immediately went into great resistance. "Pray for Sean to arrive!" sounded to me like we were being asked to try to influence another person's thoughts and actions. But another one of the students heard inside, "Sean wants to be here, but he is in resistance. Pray for the release of his resistance and he will arrive."

Now that's something we could all surrender to praying for ... resistance release for someone. So picture 12 or so people sitting in a circle on the floor every morning praying for the release of resistance in a person we did not know named Sean ... so he could join our work. We naturally began to wonder who he was.

Anyway, a couple of months went by during which every one's inner hearing became more and more clear. We were even hearing all kinds of communication in number codes, which we were told was "star language." So much for normal human endeavor.

Meantime, the Unity Church in Eugene, Unity of the Valley, hired me as interim minister until they could find a permanent minister.

One Friday late afternoon I was in the minister's office at a time I normally wouldn't have been there. I could see the front door of the church from behind my desk in the office. The door opened and a young man walked in. I stood up from my desk and immediately knew it was the Sean we had been waiting for.

"Your name is Sean!" I yelled from the minister's office loud enough for him to hear me at the front door. "We've been waiting for you!"

He didn't faint or run away or anything, so I guess all was well. He simply came over and offered me a handshake and said, "How did you know my name?" It turns out all he was doing was driving around town delivering to churches fliers concerning a Quaker function. He had no reason to suspect anyone would know his name.

I told him to sit down and I would explain it to him. I told him about our intense inner hearing work and how we had been advised by our inner voice that someone named Sean would arrive. I told him the whole story.

He said, "Wow! That's amazing! I had a very clear dream a couple of months ago. In the dream there was a small group of people doing some kind of spiritual work. Their leader was a tall, thin man like yourself. I was supposed to join them."

Needless to say, Sean moved into the house with us also. The work continued for awhile longer with everyone releasing a great deal of fear and resistance by means of an exercise which the inner voice called the "Fear/Love Exercise." Everyone in the work developed quite clear inner hearing. But as the inner voice pushed the students for higher and higher levels of resistance release, one by one the students began dropping away.

Finally there were only Sean and myself living in the house. Even Bonnie Brightstar had temporarily moved elsewhere. We had been through so much growth and opening in the six months or so of this work! One morning I was in the kitchen and I heard my inner voice say, "Now ... go purchase A Course in Miracles and study it. Then you will understand what you have been through in this work." Not fifteen minutes later, Sean came into the kitchen from his bedroom and said, "I've been guided to go out and buy A Course in Miracles."

Until that point, like most Unity ministers in those days, I had been in resistance to A Course in Miracles. But due to these previous six months of intense work, I had learned to follow the instructions of the inner voice. So Sean and myself both bought ourselves copies of the Course.

You can imagine my surprise when I was looking through the first few pages of chapter 1 of the Course and there in black and white were some of the exact same words we had heard as inner hearing students in our work of practicing inner hearing. Needless to say. I decided then and there to release my resistance to A Course in Miracles.