I. The Two Uses of Time 9-15
9. This lesson takes no time. For what is time without a past and future? It has taken time to misguide you so completely, but it takes no time at all to be what you are. Begin to practice the Holy Spirit’s use of time as a teaching aid to happiness and peace. Take this very instant, now, and think of it as all there is of time. Nothing can reach you here out of the past, and it is here that you are completely absolved, completely free, and wholly without condemnation. From this holy instant wherein holiness was born again you will go forth in time without fear, and with no sense of change with time.
10. Time is inconceivable without change, yet holiness does not change. Learn from this instant more than merely that hell does not exist. In this redeeming instant lies Heaven. And Heaven will not change, for the birth into the holy present is salvation from change. Change is an illusion, taught by those who cannot see themselves as guiltless. There is no change in Heaven because there is no change in God. In the holy instant, in which you see yourself as bright with freedom, you will remember God. For remembering Him is to remember freedom.
11. If you are tempted to be dispirited by thinking how long it would take to change your mind so completely, ask yourself, “How long is an instant?” Could you not give so short a time to the Holy Spirit for your salvation? He asks no more, for He has no need of more. It takes far longer to teach you to be willing to give Him this than for Him to use this tiny instant to offer you the whole of Heaven. In exchange for this instant He stands ready to give you the remembrance of eternity.
12. You will never give this holy instant to the Holy Spirit on behalf of your release while you are unwilling to give it to your brothers on behalf of theirs. For the instant of holiness is shared and cannot be yours alone. Remember, then, when you are tempted to attack a brother, that his instant of release is yours. Miracles are the instants of release you offer and will receive. They attest to your willingness to be released, and to offer time to the Holy Spirit for His use of it.
13. How long is an instant? It is as short for your brother as it is for you. Practice giving this blessed instant of freedom to all who are enslaved by time, and thus make time their friend for them. The Holy Spirit gives their blessed instant to you through your giving it. As you give it, He offers it to you. Be not unwilling to give what you would receive of Him, for you join with Him in giving. In the crystal cleanness of the release you give is your instantaneous escape from guilt. You must be holy if you offer holiness.
14. How long is an instant? As long as it takes to re-establish perfect sanity, perfect peace and perfect love for everyone, for God and for yourself. As long as it takes to remember immortality, and your immortal creations who share it with you. As long as it takes to exchange hell for Heaven. Long enough to transcend all of the ego’s making and ascend unto your Father.
15. Time is your friend, if you leave it to the Holy Spirit to use. He needs but very little to restore God’s whole power to you. He Who transcends time for you understands what time is for. Holiness lies not in time, but in eternity. There never was an instant in which God’s Son could lose his purity. His changeless state is beyond time, for his purity remains forever beyond attack and without variability. Time stands still in his holiness, and changes not. And so it is no longer time at all. For caught in the single instant of the eternal sanctity of God’s creation, it is transformed into forever. Give the eternal instant, that eternity may be remembered for you, in that shining instant of perfect release. Offer the miracle of the holy instant through the Holy Spirit and leave His giving it to you to Him. [1]
In our daily walk with Holy Spirit, we are to practice freeing each instant from the past and future. This is our way to learn timelessness – to step out of our human bondage to time – and enter into our eternal happiness and peace. When we recognize our moments in time as holy, we realize that each moment holds all of time in it – nothing can reach us or touch us from the past in this beautiful, clean, clear moment when our reality becomes manifest, when our freedom and wholeness is restored to our awareness. When we realize who and what we are in God, when we get in touch with our true Identity and experience the sense of freedom and liberty, wholeness and purity that we have and are, we travel in time without fear, we are no longer worried about what happens in time, we can handle all that comes to us for we see beyond the constant change and chaos of time.
Jesus tells us that holiness does not change, just as Heaven does not change. We are saved from change for change is of ego. In the eyes of God, we remain as we were created – we did not change from bright and beautiful to dim and boorish, we did not change from powerful, eternal Sons of God to vulnerable, fleshy, finite humans. We remain as we were created – bright with purity, instilled with freedom and liberty, loving and creative like God. In the holy instant we remember God and we remember ourselves as God made us.
I have studied A Course in Miracles with some brothers who claim that it is going to take thousands upon thousands of years for humanity to return to Sonship, but in paragraph 11 Jesus asks us to consider the Holy Instant. To give a moment wholly to the call of our higher minds –we remember the whole of Heaven. We get in touch with what we really are, we go beyond our identity in the world, we see and hear that which is beyond perception. We go beyond language, we go beyond our maleness and our femaleness, we go beyond all ties that we have in the world, and we remember eternity and our role in it.
And this comes to us, this beautiful sense of freedom and liberty and everlastingness, this trust in God and accepting His trust in us, when we offer this to others. We cannot hoard holiness to ourselves; we cannot say I am of God, but he is of the devil. We cannot use our holiness to attack others, to put ourselves above or below others – for what we offer to our brothers is what we offer to ourselves. Jesus tells us to bring them all into the holy instant with us – we welcome each one that comes to mind the release from time for our Sonship excludes nothing and nobody.
The holy instant is the miracle realm for in this realm is where miracles are offered and received. There is no guilt, no shame, no blame – only that which never changed. In this holy instant where you are as God created you and I am as God created me – all things that are impossible in the ego world are possible. We are no longer flesh and blood and bound to time – we are miraculously released from the misuse of time – we offer time to Holy Spirit to use to lead us out of time.
In your daily practice give everybody you meet the blessed instant of freedom – unloose the chains of time and make of time a friend. This is a quiet practice in that we do not broadcast what we are doing. We do not put on a show or establish a ritual. There is no laying on of hands involved. We quietly release all of those who cross our path or come to mind. We see them as they are; we do not see them for their past; we project nothing of their past into the present or the future. We release them in our minds from all we thought they were, what they look like, what they did, what they do – we see them as born again in that moment, we see them as holy and clean and true, we see them as guiltless.
An instant is only as long as it takes to restore our sanity, perfect peace and love for everyone, for God, and for ourselves. This is the prerequisite for Heaven. An instant is only as long as it takes to exchange hell for Heaven. It is as long as it takes to transcend the illusion of ego, humanity, and the perceptual world and ascend to God.
Time is our friend in the hands of Holy Spirit. In only an instant Holy Spirit restores God’s power to you and to me. Only Holy Spirit knows what time is for and our holiness is not found in time, but in that which never changes. Each moment we give to Holy Spirit, we enter into the timeless state. No longer changelings, timeworn and ready for the grave, we are freed from the ego’s use of time, we recognize who and what we really are, we understand oneness, we know the peace of eternal sanctity, all of creation is restored to our awareness for in it we are one.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 15 The holy instant. I The two uses of time 9-15. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
For daily 2021 Workbook lessons visit www.i-choose-love.com courtesy of Linda R.
Audio credit: www.eckiefriar.com
the friar patch 