Meditation & the Sentinels of Darkness

My understanding of meditation is imperfect. I believe that in order to better understand it, we must understand the sentinels of darkness as discussed in the
Course.

I believe a number of key quotes are necessary to understand this.
It may be useful to read all of chapters 13 and 14. Let us start
with these quotes:

1.
Under the ego's dark foundation is the memory of God, and it
is of this that you are really afraid. For this memory would
instantly restore you to your proper place, and it is this place
that you have sought to leave. Your fear of attack is nothing
compared to your fear of love. You would be willing to look even
upon your savage wish to kill God's Son, if you did not believe
that it saves you from love. For this wish caused the
separation, and you have protected it because you do not want the
separation healed. You realize that, by removing the dark cloud
that obscures it, your love for your Father would impel you to
answer His Call and leap into Heaven. You believe that attack is
salvation because it would prevent you from this. For still
deeper than the ego's foundation, and much stronger than it will
ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, and His for you.
This is what you really want to hide.

2.
In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you, and the
power He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. All this lies hidden
in every darkened place, shrouded in guilt and in the dark denial
of innocence...

3.
You who have spent your life in bringing truth to illusion,
reality to fantasy, have walked the way of dreams. For you have
gone from waking to sleeping, and on and on to a yet deeper sleep.
Each dream has led to other dreams, and every fantasy that seemed
to bring a light into the darkness but made the darkness deeper.
Your goal was darkness, in which no ray of light could enter. And
you sought a blackness so complete that you could hide from truth
forever, in complete insanity...

4.
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.

5.
By interpreting fear correctly as a positive affirmation of the
underlying belief it masks, you are undermining its perceived
usefulness by rendering it useless. Defenses that do not work at
all are automatically discarded. If you raise what fear conceals
to clear-cut unequivocal predominance, fear becomes meaningless.
You have denied its power to conceal love, which was its only
purpose. The veil that you have drawn across the face of love has
disappeared.

6.
The search for truth is but the honest searching out of everything
that interferes with truth. Truth is. It can neither be lost nor
sought nor found. It is there, wherever you are, being within you.
Yet it can be recognized or unrecognized, real or false to you. If
you hide it, it becomes unreal to you because you hid it and
surrounded it with fear. Under each cornerstone of fear on which
you have erected your insane system of belief, the truth lies
hidden. Yet you cannot know this, for by hiding truth in fear, you
see no reason to believe that the more you look at fear the less
you see it, and the clearer what it conceals becomes.

7.
Let us not save nightmares, for they are not fitting offerings
for Christ, and so they are not fit gifts for you. Take off the
covers and look at what you are afraid of.

8.
The Holy Spirit asks of you but this; bring to Him every secret
you have locked away from Him. Open every door to Him, and bid
Him enter the darkness and lighten it away. At your request He
enters gladly. He brings the light to darkness if you make the
darkness open to Him. But what you hide He cannot look upon.
He sees for you, and unless you look with Him He cannot see. The
vision of Christ is not for Him alone, but for Him with you.
Bring, therefore, all your dark and secret thoughts to Him, and
look upon them with Him. He holds the light, and you the
darkness. They cannot coexist when both of You together look on
them. His judgment must prevail, and He will give it to you as
you join your perception to His.

9.
Bringing the ego to God is but to bring error to truth, where it
stands corrected because it is the opposite of what it meets. It
is undone because the contradiction can no longer stand. How long
can contradiction stand when its impossible nature is clearly
revealed? What disappears in light is not attacked. It merely
vanishes because it is not true. Different realities are
meaningless, for reality must be one. It cannot change with time
or mood or chance. Its changelessness is what makes it real. This
cannot be undone. Undoing is for unreality. And this reality will
do for you.




DISCUSSION

Quote #1

The first sentence seems important. It is similar to the last
obstacle to peace being fear of God. Since the memory of God is
beneath the ego, it seems the purpose of the ego is to hide the
memory of God from us, i.e., to keep the memory of God in the
darkness of our unconscious. It is this memory that is at the
foundation of our fears. The second sentence states that if we
could recall our memory of God we would be instantly restored but
it is this that we do not want. The third sentence indicates that
although we fear attack, we fear love much more. The Course says
that God is love so we fear God much more than our other fears.

The fourth sentence I have difficulty understanding. First, it
states we have a "savage wish to kill God's Son". It seems to be
saying that we are unwilling to look at this wish because to look
at it would not "save" us from love. It states that the wish to
kill "God's Son" is the cause of the separation. We protect this
wish because we "do not want the separation healed". It goes on to
say that we believe attack is salvation because this prevents us
from looking at the wish to kill "God's Son". Attack is part of
the
ego thought system that maintains the separation.

Last, it states that even deeper still "is [our] intense and
burning love of God, and His for you. This is what you really want
to hide." There appears to be a layering in our mind. At the base
is God. Above this is our desire for God. Above this is the wish
to kill "God's Son" as the cause of the separation. Above this is
our fear of God and love. Above and through this is the ego
thought system to maintain the separation. One of the ego's
methods to maintain this is by hiding God in the darkness of our
unconscious.

One might ask, What is the darkness? This a question I do not
have an answer to. It may be that part of our mind that our
awareness does not have access to. It may be the ego thought
system, including the belief in the past, that maintains the
darkness. It may be lack of love. It may be that part of our
mind where Truth and God do not reside.


Quote #2

This quote seems to confirm that we have hidden our Identity and
God in darkness. This is hidden by guilt and by the innocent
denial that we are doing this.

Quote #3

This seems to further describe the process by which darkness is
used to hide Truth.

Quote #4

We have denied the healing power of love by this process of hiding
the Truth from ourselves in darkness. We then protect what is
hidden in darkness by the "sentinels of darkness." We have become
fearful of these sentinels of darkness. What are these sentinels
of darkness?

Quotes 5 & 6

These quotes gives us our clue. We use fear to hide the truth from
us. I believe the sentinels of darkness are unpleasant feelings
(either emotional or physical) as well as any perceptions we find
unpleasant. I further believe that we find things unpleasant
because we fear them. Because they are unpleasant we turn
away from them and avoid them. Fear may appear in many forms
including guilt, anger/hatred, loneliness, depression, "physical"
pain, etc. Truth is hidden in fear we must look at, through, and
beyond each area of fear in our mind to find Truth, God, love.
It is these areas of fear that are the blocks to our awareness
of love and God.

Quotes 7-9

These quotes describe the way to God. God is hidden in each area
of darkness that fear covers and protects. We must look at what we
are afraid of. We ask the Holy Spirit to go with us. We see the
darkness and the Holy Spirit sees the light. They cannot co-exist
together. As the light of awareness is brought to each area of
darkness in our minds, our minds gradually become enlightened.


This, I believe, describes the layering of the darkness of our
unconscious. It describes how the sentinels of darkness are used
to keep the truth hidden in the darkness of our unconscious (or
away from awareness) with fear. The way home is to look at these
fears with the Holy Spirit and thus remove these blocks to the
awareness of love's presence. This is how I understand the process
of meditation.

Quote #4 not only introduces the symbol "sentinels of darkness" but tells me what they are: "you who made these guardians of illusion out of nothing".

Use the symbols as you choose, but know they are illusions as well.

I agree, illusions they are.

Hi, - re sentinels of darkness -
Asking for HELP! does it when I know from experience that something is blocking me from light when beginning to meditate. I know I am in darkness. I wish not to quantify or discover sentinels.

In chapter 14 is found: The truth is true. I AM struggling with being a happy learner some days more than others. I am on one level accepting that I am a Holy Son of God, and that I am welcome when I manage to connect in meditation. I find the way I describe this can be very personal since it comes through my mind with my concepts and my thought processes and ideas. Other brothers might experience and relate to this differently.

For me, sentinels of darkness are for example fear, terror, guilt, shame, defeat and abandoning my own processes from time to time. I am happy to know Jesus and he is the focus of my love for God. I cannot judge anything only make efforts each day and follow, and learn what my mind really is, in very small steps.

For me the hardest lessons are those in which I need to learn to love myself. These always involve letting go, and my willingness to let go, as well as a basic recognition that somewhere in my mind is a place of darkness, hidden like a dark bubble. Within each bubble I look for help. I do not know and I cannot change of myself what the consequence of my error is that caused the bubble to be there. It is usually a willingness to be forgiving yet not surrendering the memory to the Holy Spirit.

In the Urtext I found a passage that mentions Helen being forgiving to a difficult person, and doing a deed of kindness for this person. And Jesus told her that the forgiveness was appropriate, and that the other person still in sin is. Each person has their own individual journey.

As long as I have any dark 'bubbles' I know my own sin needs to be surrendered and offered for forgiveness through the Holy Spirit to be surrendered. Each time a bubble is released, I know joy, peace and light. Then I slip away - without realising this - back into darkness.

I know I am love, and I know I am being healed. I know my brother is love, no matter what illusions he seeks to hide behind. Healing is there for all.
This is a process I have not known through by other source of learning about spirit and all my brothers and me. Only the Course in Miracles has helped me to become free from shadows in my past, progressively. SLowly the majesty and truth of the Golden Rule is beginning to shine in my mind in true meaning and porpose.

I offer this group my love in Christ. I will appreciate any feedback on this. Maybe I am preaching to the converted?

Thula