u/Salvationsway

The Holy Spirit wills only to make His resolution complete and perfect, and so He seeks and FINDS the source of problems where it IS, and there undoes it. And with each step in His undoing is the SEPARATION more and more undone, and union brought closer. He is not at all confused by any “reasons” for separation. ALL He perceives in separation is that it must be UNDONE. Let Him uncover the hidden spark of beauty in your relationships, and show it to you. Its loveliness will so attract you that you will be unwilling ever to lose the sight of it again. And you will let it transform the relationship so you can see it more and more. For you will WANT it more and more, and become increasingly unwilling to let it be hidden from you. And you will learn to seek for, and ESTABLISH, conditions in which this beauty can be seen.

To forgive is merely to remember only the LOVING thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you. All the rest must be forgotten. Forgiveness is a selective remembrance, based not on YOUR selection. For the shadow figures you would make immortal are “enemies” of reality. Be willing to forgive the Son of God for what he did NOT do. The shadow figures are the witnesses you bring with you to demonstrate he did what he did NOT. Because you brought them, you will hear them. And you who kept them by your OWN selection do not understand how they came into your minds, and what their purpose is.

Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? In no fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely. Nothing that you see here, sleeping or waking, comes near to such loveliness. And nothing will you value like unto this, nor hold so dear. Nothing that you remember that made your heart seem to sing with joy has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you. For you will see the Son of God. You will behold the beauty which the Holy Spirit loves to look upon, and which He thanks the Father for. He was created to see this for YOU, until you learn to see it for yourself. And all His teaching leads to seeing it and giving thanks to Him.

Be willing, then, to give all you have held outside the truth to Him Who KNOWS the truth, and in Whom all is brought to truth. Be not concerned with anything except you WILLINGNESS to have this be accomplished. HE will accomplish it; NOT you. But forget not this: When you become disturbed and lose your peace of mind because ANOTHER is attempting to solve his problems through fantasy, you are refusing to forgive YOURSELF for just this same attempt. And you are holding BOTH of you away from truth and from salvation. As you forgive him, you restore to truth what was deemed by BOTH of you. And you will see where you have GIVEN it.

It is, then, only your wish to change reality that is fearful, because by your wish you think you have ACCOMPLISHED what you wish. This strange position, in a sense, acknowledges your power. Yet by distorting it, and devoting it to “evil,” it also makes it unreal. You cannot be faithful to two masters who ask of you conflicting things. What you use in fantasy you DENY to truth. Yet what you GIVE to truth to use for you is safe from fantasy.

The betrayal of the Son of God lies only in illusions, and all his “sins” are but his own imagining. His reality is forever sinless. He need not be forgiven but AWAKENED. In his dreams he HAS betrayed himself, his brothers and his God. Yet what is done in dreams has not been REALLY done. It is impossible to convince the dreamer that this is so, for dreams are what they are BECAUSE of their illusion of reality. Only in waking is the full release from them, for only then does it become perfectly apparent that they had no effect on reality at all, and did not change it. Fantasies CHANGE reality. That is their PURPOSE. They cannot do so in reality, but they CAN do so in the mind that would have reality different. 

“Forgive us our illusions, Father, and help us to accept our true relationship with You, in which there are no illusions, and where none can ever enter. Our holiness is Yours. What can there be in us that NEEDS forgiveness when Yours is perfect? The sleep of forgetfulness is only the unwillingness to remember Your forgiveness and Your Love. Let us not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the Son of God is not Your Will. And let us receive only what YOU have given, and accept but this into the minds which You created, and which You love. Amen

Remember that you always choose between truth and illusion; between the REAL Atonement which will heal and the ego’s “atonement” which would destroy. The power of God and all His Love, without limit, will support you as you seek only your place in the plan of Atonement arising from His Love. Be an ally of God and not the ego in seeking how Atonement can come to you. His help suffices, fro His Messenger understands how to restore the Kingdom to you, and to place ALL your investment in salvation in your relationship with Him.

For a time, you may attempt to bring illusions into the holy instant to hinder your full awareness of COMPLETE difference, in all respects, between your experience of truth and illusion. Yet you will not attempt this long. In the holy instant, the power of the Holy Spirit will prevail because you JOINED Him. The illusions you bring with you will weaken the experience of Him for a while, and will prevent you from keeping the experience in your mind. Yet the holy instant IS eternal, and your illusions of time will not prevent the timeless from being what it is, nor you from experiencing it as it is.

Against the ego’s insane notion of salvation the Holy Spirit gently lays the holy instant. We said before that the Holy Spirit must teach through comparisons, and uses opposites to point to truth. The holy instant is the OPPOSITE of the ego’s fixed belief in salvation through vengeance for the past. In the holy instant, it is accepted that the past is gone, and with its passing the drive for vengeance has been uprooted, and has disappeared. The stillness and the peace of NOW enfolds you in perfect gentleness. Everything is gone except the truth. 

In the special relationship, it does not SEEM to be an acting out of vengeance which you seek. And even when the hatred and the savagery break briefly through into awareness, the illusion of love is not profoundly shaken. Yet the one thing which the ego never allows to reach awareness is that the special relationship is the acting out of vengeance on YOURSELF. But what else COULD it be? In seeking the special relationship, you look not for glory in YOURSELF. You have denied that it is THERE, and the relationship becomes your SUBSTITUTE for it. And vengeance becomes your substitute for Atonement, and the ESCAPE from vengeance becomes your LOSS. 

In the special relationship you are ALLOWING your destruction to be. That this is insane is obvious. But what is less obvious to you is that PRESENT is useless to you while you pursue the ego’s goal as its ally. The past is gone; seek not to preserve it in the special relationship which binds yo to it, and that you must return TO the past to find salvation. There is no fantasy which does not contain the dream of retribution for the past. Would you act out the dream, or let it go?

Do not underestimate the intensity of the ego’s drive for vengeance on the past. It is completely savage and completely insane. For the ego remembers everything that you have done which offended it, and seeks retribution on YOU. The fantasies it brings to the special relationship in chooses in which to act out its hate are fantasies of YOUR destruction. For the ego holds the past AGAINST you, and in your ESCAPE from the past, it sees itself deprived of the vengeance it believes that you so justly merit. Yet without you alliance in your own destruction, the ego could not hold you to the past.

The special relationship TAKES VENGEANCE on the past. By seeking to remove suffering in the past, it OVERLOOKS the present in its preoccupation with the past and its total commitment to it. No special relationship is experienced in the present. Shades of the past envelop it, and make it what it is. It HAS no meaning in the present, and if it means nothing NOW, it cannot have any real meaning at all. How can you change the past EXCEPT in fantasy? And who can give you what you think the past has deprived you of? The past is nothing. Do not seek to lay the blame for deprivation on it, for the past is gone. You cannot really NOT let go what has ALREADY gone. It must be, therefore, that you are maintaining the illusion that it has NOT gone because you think it serves some purpose that you want FULFILLED. And it must also be that this purpose could NOT be fulfilled in the present, but ONLY in the past.

It is impossible to let the past go without relinquishing the special relationship. For the special relationship is an attempt to RE-ENACT the past and CHANGE it. Imagined sights remembered pain, past disappointments, perceived injustices and deprivations all enter into the special relationship, which becomes a way in which you seek to restore your wounded self-esteem. What basis would you have for choosing a special partner WITHOUT the past? Every such choice is made because of something “evil” in the past, to which you cling, and for which must someone else atone.

The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still attracts you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there let Him release you. He needs only your willingness to SHARE His perspective to give it to you completely. And your willingness need not be complete because HIS is perfect. It is His task to atone for your unwillingness by His perfect faith, and it is His faith you share with Him there. Out of your recognition of your unwillingness for your release, His PERFECT willingness is given you. Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His call. And LET Him call on Heaven FOR you.

The new perspective you will gain from crossing over will be the understanding of where Heaven IS. From here, it seems to be outside and across the bridge. Yet as you cross to join it, it will join with YOU and become one with you. And you will think, in glad astonishment, that for all this you gave up NOTHING! The joy of Heaven, which has no limit, is increased with each light that returns to take its rightful place within it. Wait no longer, for the love of God and YOU. And may the holy instant speed you on the way, as it will surely do if you but let it come to you.

Be glad you have escaped the mockery of salvation which the ego offered you, and look not back with longing on the travesty it made of your relationships. Now no-one need suffer, for you have come too far to yield to the illusion of the beauty and holiness of guilt. Only the wholly insane could look on death and suffering, sickness and despair, and see it thus. What guilt holds is ugly, fearful and very dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there. And be you thankful that there IS a place where truth and beauty wait for you. Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits you for the simple willingness to give up nothing BECAUSE it is nothing.

Nothing you seek to strengthen in the special relationship is REALLY part of you. And you cannot keep part of the thought system which taught you it was real, and understand the Thought that REALLY knows what you are. You HAVE allowed the Thought of your reality to enter your minds, and because you invited it, it WILL abide with you. Your love for it will not allow you to betray yourself, and you could not enter into a relationship where it could not go with you, for you would not BE apart from it.

Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality. Time is kind, and if you use it FOR reality, it will keep gentle pace with you in your transition. The urgency is only in dislodging your minds from their fixed position here. This will not leave you homeless, and without a frame of reference. The period of disorientation, which precedes the actual transition, is far shorter than the time it took to fix your minds so firmly on illusions. Delay will hurt you now more that before, only because you realize it IS delay, and that escape from pain is really possible. Find hope and comfort, rather than despair, in this: You could no longer find even the ILLUSION of love in any special relationship here. For you are no longer wholly insane, and you would recognize the guilt of self-betrayal for what it is.