T-1.IV The Escape from Darkness
1. The escape from darkness involves two stages: First, the recognition that darkness cannot hide. ²This step usually entails fear. ³Second, the recognition that there is nothing you want to hide even if you could. ⁴This step brings escape from fear. ⁵When you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not only be willing to enter into communion but will also understand peace and joy.
2. Holiness can never be really hidden in darkness, but you can deceive yourself about it. ²This deception makes you fearful because you realize in your heart it is a deception, and you exert enormous efforts to establish its reality. ³The miracle sets reality where it belongs. ⁴Reality belongs only to spirit, and the miracle acknowledges only truth. ⁵It thus dispels illusions about yourself, and puts you in communion with yourself and God. ⁶The miracle joins in the Atonement by placing the mind in the service of the Holy Spirit. ⁷This establishes the proper function of the mind and corrects its errors, which are merely lacks of love. ⁸Your mind can be possessed by illusions, but spirit is eternally free. ⁹If a mind perceives without love, it perceives an empty shell and is unaware of the spirit within. ¹⁰But the Atonement restores spirit to its proper place. ¹¹The mind that serves spirit is invulnerable.
3. Darkness is lack of light as sin is lack of love. ²It has no unique properties of its own. ³It is an example of the ‘scarcity’ belief, from which only error can proceed. ⁴Truth is always abundant. ⁵Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no needs of any kind. ⁶The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to you; or rather, to restore it to your awareness. ⁷You were given everything when you were created, just as everyone was.
4. The emptiness engendered by fear must be replaced by forgiveness. ²That is what the Bible means by “There is no death”, and why I could demonstrate that death does not exist. ³I came to fulfill the law by reinterpreting it. ⁴The law itself, if properly understood, offers only protection. ⁵It is those who have not yet changed their minds who brought the ‘hell-fire’ concept into it. ⁶I assure you that I will witness for anyone who lets me, and to whatever extent he permits it. ⁷Your witnessing demonstrates your belief, and thus strengthens it. ⁸Those who witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abandoned the belief in deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned belongs to them.