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Study of Text, C 14: VI. The Light of Communication, P 6. 5-10-17

VI. The Light of Communication, P 6

6 You who speak in dark and devious symbols do not understand the language you have made. It has no meaning, for its purpose is not communication, but rather the disruption of communication. If the purpose of language is communication, how can this tongue mean anything? Yet even this strange and twisted effort to communicate through not communicating holds enough of love to make it meaningful if its interpreter is not its maker. You who made it are but expressing conflict, from which the Holy Spirit would release you. Leave what you would communicate to Him. He will interpret it to you with perfect clarity, for He knows with Whom you are in perfect communication.

Journal
In another place in the Course, Jesus says that words are but symbols of symbols and thus twice removed from reality. Now he is talking about this again. He says that we speak in dark and devious symbols and that we don’t understand the language we have made. We call this communication but is it really?

Here is a definition of communication from a dictionary: a technique for expressing ideas effectively. Do we actually express our ideas effectively using the language we made up? Recently, someone asked me for my thoughts on a passage from the Course. I expressed my opinion of its meaning as clearly as I could.

She was very pleased with my answer and started talking about what I had told her. Very quickly, I realized she did not understand what I meant. Now we were in conflict, our thoughts on this passage disagreeing with each other. I could have tried to get her to reach my understanding, to convince her to see things my way, but that would have simply increased the conflict, and conflict is not communication. So I let it go and assumed that she heard what she needed to hear at this time.

This is not the first time I have had this experience. It actually happens all the time. I said something innocuous to a friend and she understood it to be a judgment against her. I was shocked at her reaction and stood there trying to think how she came to that conclusion from what I said. Again, conflict is not communication. Using our dark and devious symbols we had tried but failed to communicate.

I think one of the reasons our language is not adequate for true communication is that we use it to convey ideas, while at the same time, to obscure other thoughts. Suppose I was trying to give you a clear explanation of why relationships go awry. I am sharing some personal examples with you, but I am also being careful to share only my stories that I am willing for you to hear. So I am trying to communicate through not communicating.

How, then, can we actually communicate while we are hampered by language? Jesus says we can do this if its interpreter is not its maker. If I ask the Holy Spirit to speak through me, it will be in a style and with a vocabulary that is mine, but the intent will be His. This is what I try to do when I make these journal entries knowing I am going to share them.

I begin by reading the paragraph and then walking away from it, allowing the Holy Spirit to inform me. This part happens without my active cooperation. Then I come back to the task and start writing. How well I allow the Holy Spirit to interpret for me depends on my willingness to set aside what I think I know.

It takes a good deal of practice to allow my spoken language to be directed by the Holy Spirit. I am still working on that. The ego really likes to be in charge of communication and I can still fall back into that habit when I am not mindful. If we all communicated through mind rather than language, all would know all that is being thought and felt.

Sometimes I shudder at the thought, but really, if I knew everything someone thought and felt, then I would understand why they had these thoughts. I would then have compassion for them rather than judgment. Jesus says that even our twisted language holds enough love to make it meaningful if we leave interpretation to Him. So love is the means of true communication and if we fully understood all the motivating factors in everyone’s words, we would feel only love for them.

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Study of Text, C 14: VI. The Light of Communication, P 5. 5-9-17

VI. The Light of Communication, P 5

5 You have regarded the separation as a means for breaking your communication with your Father. The Holy Spirit reinterprets it as a means of re-establishing what was not broken, but has been made obscure. All things you made have use to Him, for His most holy purpose. He knows you are not separate from God, but He perceives much in your mind that lets you think you are. All this and nothing else would He separate from you. The power of decision, which you made in place of the power of creation, He would teach you how to use on your behalf. You who made it to crucify yourself must learn of Him how to apply it to the holy cause of restoration.

Journal
We used separation to break communication with God, but that never happened. We only obscured that communication. God’s Voice speaks to us all through the day; we just don’t listen. Instead, we listen to the ego. Like everything that we made to separate ourselves from God, the Holy Spirit will use it to help us return to God. He will re-establish what was never broken.

The Holy Spirit looks into our mind and finds those thoughts that let us believe in our separation, and with our permission, He removes them from us. We made the power of decision in place of the power of creation, and the Holy Spirit will teach us to use this on our behalf. In Workbook Lesson 152, The Power of Decision, Jesus tells us that we used our power to make this world, and this world is exactly what we choose it to be.

In Chapter 30, Rules for Decision, Jesus lays out the process to consciously use our power to reverse decisions we have tried and decided against. He does this in a step-by-step process that is very helpful in undoing what we have done. In studying and practicing this process, I learned that when my life takes a turn I regret, it is because I asked the ego for advice rather than the Holy Spirit. I am free to change my mind.

We who made the power of decision to crucify ourselves must learn of Him how to apply it to the holy cause of restoration.

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Study of Text, C 14: VI. The Light of Communication, P 4. 5-8-17

VI. The Light of Communication, P 4

4 Death yields to live simply because destruction is not true. The light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when they are brought together, the truth of one must make the falsity of its opposite perfectly clear. Keep not guilt and guiltlessness apart, for your belief that you can have them both is meaningless. All you have done by keeping them apart is lose their meaning by confusing them with each other. And so you do not realize that only one means anything. The other is wholly without sense of any kind.

Journal

Jesus tells us that we must not keep guilt and guiltlessness apart from each other. I was wondering how it is that I do this. What came to me is that I keep guilt and guiltlessness apart when I think that sometimes guilt is true and warranted. When I think that someone really did something and that they really are guilty of it, I am trying to believe that guiltlessness is true, but sometimes guilt is true. Jesus says that when I do this, they lose their meaning, and I confuse them with each other.

There was once a woman in my life that I didn’t like and who felt like a threat to me. She was someone I used to work with, and I spent a long time justifying my belief that she was guilty. There just seemed to be so much proof that I was right. When I looked for people to support my belief, I found it.

When someone would see her value, instead, I would simply ignore it. I refused to bring the guilt to guiltlessness. I wanted her condemned and so I kept guiltlessness apart from my belief in her guilt. I did this for as long as I could tolerate the loss of peace. When I had made myself too miserable to stand it anymore, I changed my mind.

I stopped asking ego to define this woman, and I started asking the Holy Spirit to heal my mind. I wanted to see her as guiltless and I wanted that more than anything. In that moment, the miracle occurred and suddenly, I knew she was guiltless. Her behavior didn’t entirely change, though, in the light of my love, she did behave differently at times. But no matter what she said or did, I saw it differently.

I stopped arresting my sight at her body/personality, and I saw her light. I no longer saw her behavior as mean and hateful, but only as confused. Like all of us, she wanted to be happy but was confused as to how to do that. What I felt from her when I began to see her as guiltless, had nothing to do with her behavior. When I gave up guilt, love took its place. I came to love my enemy. There was a time when I would never have believed that was possible in this case, but then I brought guilt and guiltlessness together.

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Study of Text, C 14: VI. The Light of Communication, P 3. 5-3-17

VI. The Light of Communication, P 3

3 Would you continue to give imagined power to these strange ideas of safety? They are neither safe nor unsafe. They do not protect; neither do they attack. They do nothing at all, being nothing at all. As guardians of darkness and of ignorance look to them only for fear, for what they keep obscure is fearful. But let them go, and what was fearful will be so no longer. Without protection of obscurity, only the light of love remains, for only this has meaning and can live in light. Everything else must disappear.

Journal
What strange ideas is Jesus talking about in this paragraph? What is it that we think is keeping us safe, but do nothing? The first things that come to my mind are guilt, fear, and projection. I have mentioned before that I am afraid of heights, and so the ego mind reasons that the solution is to stay away from heights.

As I have started listening to Holy Spirit more than ego, I have decided that the answer is not to change where I allow myself to be, but to change the problem at the source, which is in my mind. But the ego warned me that if I succeeded, then I would wind up on some scary mountain, trying to navigate a switchback.

Just imagining being there triggers the terror I feel at the thought, and I don’t want to stop being afraid of heights. I think my fear protects me from what I fear. The reasoning is convoluted and obscures the truth. The truth is much simpler and hides nothing. If I were willing to accept the simple truth of my invulnerability, all the crazy thinking would be gone.

The idea that I am guilty is another dark thought, and the ego offers me protection through projection. Just get rid of it, the ego says. Throw it out and let it stick to someone else. See that it is the other person’s fault. The ego doesn’t tell me that getting rid of it that way only creates a morass of complex thinking that leaves me with even more guilt.

The fact is that there is nowhere outside the mind and thus hurling it “away” leaves it right where the guilt began, in mind. The decision to project the guilt and make someone else guilty instead,  just makes me feel guiltier. The whole attempt is so devious and deceitful, how could I not feel guilty. It just seems so obscure that I become afraid of myself. The truth is simple; I am innocent, and there is no such thing as guilt. There. Problem solved.

Another guardian of darkness is sickness. Sickness seems to prove that I am this body I seem to inhabit. Since I am the body, I cannot be the Son of God. Apparently, I am not loved by this God; look how weak and vulnerable He created me. Look how He punishes me. I must be very guilty. The ego then suggests remedies that will thwart my thoroughly deserved sickness, and thus the guilt increases. It’s such a messy thought process that I become too afraid to look further.

The simple truth becomes evident when I stop asking ego what everything means and start asking the Holy Spirit. I am not this body. I am the thinker of the body, the mind that made it. It is just a neutral object onto which I project whatever I want. It is like the canvas on which the artist paints.

The canvas doesn’t make its own painting. The body, in kind, does not make its own sickness. I did this to myself, and I can undo it by accepting the truth. While not guilty for my choice for sickness, I am responsible for it, and thank goodness for that. As before, I understand that guilt is not real and thus punishment is not necessary. All I have to do is accept the clear and unambiguous truth. When that happens, fear falls away.

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Study of Text, C 14: VI. The Light of Communication, P 2. 5-2-17

VI. The Light of Communication, P 2

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. Attack will always yield to love if it is brought to love, not hidden from it. There is no darkness that the light of love will not dispel, unless it is concealed from love’s beneficence. What is kept apart from love cannot share its healing power, because it has been separated off and kept in darkness. The sentinels of darkness watch over it carefully, and you who made these guardians of illusion out of nothing are now afraid of them.

Journal
This explanation seems very simple to me. My dark thoughts are protected from the Holy Spirit when I insist I am guilty because I have them. They are dispelled when I stop defending these ideas and let love heal them instead. It is truly the easiest thing in the world to do. It only seems hard when I listen to the ego’s dire warnings.

I used to think that when I was sad and discouraged, there was nothing I could do about this emotional state. Slowly, I proved to myself that I could let these feelings go if I asked the Holy Spirit to show me how to see them differently. If I gave them to the Holy Spirit, I could let love undo them. But I would notice the feelings would re-emerge when I was tired and didn’t have the energy to deal with them.

The return of the feelings at a time I felt vulnerable would scare me. I wondered if I was wrong about the whole thing and if I was forever trapped in my dark mind. Then one evening, I told the Holy Spirit that I was tired of this and, that I wanted to claim my happiness all the time.

I told Him that I didn’t know what to do about the sadness that would creep in at night and the fear and guilt that resulted, but I knew that He did and I put it in His hands. Holy cow! That was it! Now, if the sadness tries to return, I just laugh at it. It is nothing but smoke and mirrors. I just say no to sadness, and the feeling melts away.

Sadness is just one form of darkness, but it is the same with all forms, guilt, fear, anger; they all dissipate when given to love. I have a couple of dark thoughts that have been harder for me to turn over to Spirit. It is harder, I think because I think it is harder. But each time they come up, it is a little easier and so I continue to practice this process until I master it.

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Study of Text, C 14: VI. The Light of Communication, P 1. 5-1-17

VI. The Light of Communication, P 1
1 The journey that we undertake together is the exchange of dark for light, of ignorance for understanding. Nothing you understand is fearful. It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening, and shrink away from it to further darkness. And yet it is only the hidden that can terrify, not for what it is, but for its hiddenness. The obscure is frightening because you do not understand its meaning. If you did, it would be clear and you would be no longer in the dark. Nothing has hidden value, for what is hidden cannot be shared, and so its value is unknown. The hidden is kept apart, but value always lies in joint appreciation. What is concealed cannot be loved, and so it must be feared.

Journal
The world as we see it is dark until we begin to bring our perceptions to the light. Our life within this world is dark in the same way and everyone here experiences fear and guilt. From what I understand from reading this paragraph, it is not the world or our life that is frightening; it is our lack of understanding that drives us deeper into the darkness. Because we don’t understand the world we see, we are afraid of it.

This is good news, indeed. We are afraid, not of the world, but are afraid of what we do not understand. The world is not the problem; meaninglessness is the problem, and God did not create meaninglessness. We can discover the meaning and in doing so, it becomes something we can share.

This is the purpose of the Atonement. We forgive what we condemned and learn of its value. When it is no longer hidden, it can be appreciated and what is appreciated can be shared and loved. Where there is love, there is not fear. I have proven this to myself. I have forgiven much and in doing so I have discovered my purpose. I share this purpose with all who have discovered it for themselves. My life is much lighter and happier now, and I have peace in a way I, heretofore, could not even imagine.

Let yourself become aware of the darkness without guilt. The darkness is an illusion born of misunderstanding and nothing to be feared. Give your willingness to know the truth instead. Watch the light come into your awareness, and in the light you see the value of life because you understand it. In understanding it, you will share it, and in sharing it, you will love it.

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Study of Text, C 14: V. The Circle of Atonement, P 11. 4-27-17

V. The Circle of Atonement, P 11

11 Each one you see you place within the holy circle of Atonement or leave outside, judging him fit for crucifixion or for redemption. If you bring him into the circle of purity, you will rest there with him. If you leave him without, you join him there. Judge not except in quietness which is not of you. Refuse to accept anyone as without the blessing of Atonement, and bring him into it by blessing him. Holiness must be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy. Come gladly to the holy circle, and look out in peace on all who think they are outside. Cast no one out, for here is what he seeks along with you. Come, let us join him in the holy place of peace which is for all of us, united as one within the Cause of peace.

Journal

Oh, my! What a beautiful paragraph this is. The following passage is very helpful in its simplicity.

If you bring him into the circle of purity, you will rest there with him. If you leave him without, you join him there.

Every morning I pray for the people on my prayer list. My prayer is that they not be left alone in their guilt, and my visualization is one of drawing them into the circle of Atonement. This morning as I did this, I felt as if I was inviting them in and then holding them all in love as perfect as I can conceive of at this time. I was overwhelmed with joy.

On the other hand, if I imagine anyone as unworthy of the Atonement, I cast myself from within this circle of love. At this moment, I cannot imagine wanting to leave anyone out, so I asked Holy Spirit to point me to this error. Immediately I thought about my son and realized that I had imagined him outside the circle of Atonement.

I didn’t know that I was doing this until the Holy Spirit helped me to see it. My son was going through some tough times recently, and in my fear and frustration, I felt like it was his own fault. He seemed to me to be bent on self-destruction, and I was, in one moment, angry with him for that, in the next, I felt sorry for him and sad for him.

This judgment was from the ego mind, and it was the idea that he did not have a place in the circle. It also cast me out of that same circle. I felt fearful, guilty and unlovable. Like my judgment of him, I was being self-destructive and doing this to myself. Ha! The world really is a mirror, isn’t it. As I correct that error and refuse to leave my precious son alone with his guilt, I feel us both enfolded in the awesome love of God. I joined him in the holy place of peace which is for all of us, united as one within the Cause of peace.

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