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Study of Text, C 14: VI. The Light of Communication, P 8. 5-15-17

VI. The Light of Communication, P 8

8 The Holy Spirit’s function is entirely communication. He therefore must remove whatever interferes with communication in order to restore it. Therefore, keep no source of interference from His sight, for He will not attack your sentinels. But bring them to Him and let His gentleness teach you that, in the light, they are not fearful, and cannot serve to guard the dark doors behind which nothing at all is carefully concealed. We must open all doors and let the light come streaming through. There are no hidden chambers in God’s temple. Its gates are open wide to greet His Son. No one can fail to come where God has called him, if he close not the door himself upon his Father’s welcome.

Journal
This paragraph is such good news! The Holy Spirit will remove from my mind all that interferes with communication as long as I don’t prevent him from doing so. Jesus says that He will not attack my sentinels, so I have to give him my thinking errors, my dark thoughts, and not defend them from His help.

I don’t have a lot of sentinels because I don’t have a lot I would defend. I used to defend my special relationships, but I seldom do that anymore. The way I used to do this, was to deliberately not ask Holy Spirit to decide for me what my relationships mean and how to use them. This was especially true with my children.

If my daughter asked me to do something, I would not ask for guidance about the answer. I didn’t want to take a chance that the answer I was given would be no. I didn’t think I could say no to my daughter. I was too invested in my daughter’s opinion of me to take that gamble. When I finally let the Holy Spirit heal that relationship, I was able to open that part of my mind to Him. I still loved and enjoyed my daughter, but did not need her to love and enjoy me. What freedom!

I’m sorry it took me so long to trust the Holy Spirit. The reason I waited as long as I did is because I thought I had to guard this need to be loved and appreciated. It seemed so very important to me, that I could not chance doing anything to upset the delicate balance. With trust growing within me, I let the Holy Spirit in and He showed me that I was guarding nothing.

Now, this relationship is stronger and happier for both of us without this needless burden projected onto it. All of my mind can be this free and love filled if I only open the door to the Holy Spirit. He will do what is necessary to restore communication.

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Study of Text, C 14: VI. The Light of Communication, P 7. 5-12-17

VI. The Light of Communication, P 7

7 You know not what you say, and so you know not what is said to you. Yet your Interpreter perceives the meaning in your alien language. He will not attempt to communicate the meaningless. But He will separate out all that has meaning, dropping off the rest and offering your true communication to those who would communicate as truly with you. You speak two languages at once, and this must lead to unintelligibility. Yet if one means nothing and the other everything, only that one is possible for purposes of communication. The other but interferes with it.

Journal

As I read this, I think about talking to a friend of mine about her life. First I listen to what she is saying to me. If I listen with the ego, I will hear only what I understand through my ego mind. For instance, she might tell me about a dear person in her life who died, and what I hear are my beliefs about death. I will hear how I would feel if it happened to me. My response to her might be helpful or it might now help at all.

If on the other hand, I step back as my ego self and allow the Holy Spirit to interpret her words, I will discern the meaning that she is really trying to convey. I will hear the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of her words, and when I respond, I will say something that will actually help or comfort her.

This applies to all communication. On Facebook, I saw someone attacking people he does not agree with. I had many thoughts about this. I could see his error and based on my own experiences and beliefs, I imagined myself contacting this person and convincing him to see this differently. But, I have had enough experience with ego thinking to recognize it when I see it in myself. I let it go.

Evidently, I just let it go in form, because when I began my prayers, I found myself thinking of this person again, and wishing I could somehow help in this situation. Perhaps because I was already in my right mind and open to Holy Spirit, something truly helpful was communicated.

In my prayers, I visualize myself standing in the circle of Atonement with Jesus. I think of each person who has asked for prayers and knowing that no one should be left alone in their guilt, I see them standing with us in that holy circle. There in the circle, all is healed by Love. On this morning when that man came into my consciousness, I felt such love for him and such desire for his inclusion in the circle, that I knew I was offering a miracle.

There was no ego desire to change him. I simply could not imagine leaving him alone in his guilt, and all I wanted was for him to know how loved and perfect he was. That is the difference between communication directed by ego, and communication through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit went through my mind discarding all egocentric thoughts based on fear, and all that was left was love. This love is what He communicated through me.

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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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