ACIM Chapter 14. IV. The Light of Communication P 1-3
The Light of Communication
VI. The Light of Communication
1. The journey that we undertake together is the exchange of dark for light, of ignorance for understanding. ²Nothing you understand is fearful. ³It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening, and shrink away from it to further darkness. ⁴And yet it is only the hidden that can terrify, not for what it is, but for its hiddenness. ⁵The obscure is frightening because you do not understand its meaning. ⁶If you did, it would be clear and you would be no longer in the dark. ⁷Nothing has hidden value, for what is hidden cannot be shared, and so its value is unknown. ⁸The hidden is kept apart, but value always lies in joint appreciation. ⁹What is concealed cannot be loved, and so it must be feared.
2. The quiet light in which the Holy Spirit dwells within you is merely perfect openness, in which nothing is hidden and therefore nothing is fearful. ²Attack will always yield to love if it is brought to love, not hidden from it. ³There is no darkness that the light of love will not dispel, unless it is concealed from love’s beneficence. ⁴What is kept apart from love cannot share its healing power, because it has been separated off and kept in darkness. ⁵The sentinels of darkness watch over it carefully, and you who made these guardians of illusion out of nothing are now afraid of them.
3. Would you continue to give imagined power to these strange ideas of safety?
²They are neither safe nor unsafe. ³They do not protect; neither do they attack. ⁴They do nothing at all, being nothing at all. ⁵As guardians of darkness and of ignorance look to them only for fear, for what they keep obscure is fearful. ⁶But let them go, and what was fearful will be so no longer. ⁷Without protection of obscurity only the light of love remains, for only this has meaning and can live in light. ⁸Everything else must disappear. (ACIM, T-14.VI.1:1–3:8)
I remember when I was just beginning to study the Course.
I was learning to watch the thoughts in my mind. But I didn’t want to see them, and I didn’t want to ask the Holy Spirit to look with me because I felt so guilty and ashamed. This explains why it took me so long to see any improvement. The Holy Spirit must look with us at these dark thoughts. His light shows they never had reality. The more I hid my thoughts, the more frightened I was of them. If they were so bad that I couldn’t look at them, it must mean something terrible about me.
That was not true, of course. Eventually, I began to see the error in hiding these thoughts in the dark. I made myself afraid of them, not because they meant anything, but because in hiding them, I convinced myself they must be dangerous and damning. As I began to look with the Holy Spirit, the light in my mind proved the thoughts were meaningless, not fearful.
Real change began to occur as I began to recognize the dark sentinels.
I had placed them in my mind to protect me from my perceived exposure. Guilt was the main one. I would feel guilty and quickly look for someplace to project that guilt. If I felt like a bad mother, I blamed it on the way I was raised. If I felt guilty for being unkind, I blamed it on the other person for causing my anger. Guilt told me it was protecting me, but it was really preventing my healing.
Distraction was another sentinel designed to keep me from looking too hard at the thoughts. If I began to feel uncomfortable with my mind watching, I would watch TV instead. Or start watching someone else’s behavior. I was no longer drinking much and no longer experimenting with drugs, but that still left a lot of distractions. Shopping was a big one, parties, games, pretty much anything that kept my mind busy.
Justifications were another sentinel that helped avoid the issue. I had begun to have serious relationship issues, and it was never my fault, thanks to the sentinel, Justification. I could always find a way to point the finger at my husband and so see myself as blameless. Like all these dark sentinels, it didn’t really help since my way out of the problems was to heal my mind, not his.
Eventually, a little at a time, I was able to find my way clear of the darkness.
I could see that it wasn’t the dark that was scary; it was the belief that the need for darkness meant there was something to fear. I began to see that when I did go to the Holy Spirit with a fearful or angry thought, I would see more clearly. Then I would feel better, not worse. I finally began to laugh at the idea that I needed to hide from the Holy Spirit what I needed Him to heal. So,I discovered that the dark sentinels, once brought to light, cannot guard anything because there is nothing to guard.
I began to realize I was not becoming loving. I was uncovering the love that had never left. The darkness had not been removed; it had been recognized as nothing. What remained, without any effort on my part, was what had always been there.
What did I find in the light once the darkness no longer obscured it? Love. Only love. At first, it was love sometimes and sometimes darkness. Then love more often, and finally, now, when there is not love, I am surprised, and I know to examine my thoughts. I am not so easily discouraged from this process because there is too much light in my mind to fear looking. I look past guilt and the other dark sentinels to the love that is always there waiting for me to notice it. Even when I find myself in fear, I remember that the darkness is just a mistaken thought and that it is not a true thought. I can let it go as easily as I thought it. And so I keep bringing every shadow to the light, where I remember what has always been true.
I am still learning, but now I am learning in the light.