In some ways this is where the greatest learning about the holy instant can be gained. It happens when you, due to whatever circumstances are facing you, arrive at a point of overwhelm and you experience this overwhelm and the fear associated with it long enough to become literally exhausted by it. And there comes a point where involuntarily you collapse, in so many words, you lose faith in yourself and you let go—you can’t hang on anymore.

Now if this is genuine, you find yourself immediately not in a place of depression or grief, but of peace. If it is in-genuine, if the collapse is a ploy, if it’s part of your repertoire of being in control, then there won’t be peace, there will be anger. And your collapse will be an expression of your anger.

And that doesn’t constitute a holy instant. It doesn’t constitute the practice of the two-step. And therefore, the blessing of the holy instant for you, is non-existent—it escapes you.

None of you realizes the incredible value and, I’m going to say, power of peace. Of course, when you practice the holy instant or the two-step, you do indeed shut up, don’t you. That’s the first step of the two-steps. And then in the silence you reach out beyond yourself—beyond that in you which you have faith in, confidence in. And you reach out to that which, at the present you have very little confidence in, especially if you’re in a state of stress. When you shut up—first part of the two-step—reach out to the Father or the Holy Spirit desiring to be refreshed, to be in-filled with what the truth is—the truth that heals, the truth that transforms, regenerates and redeems.

I’m bringing this out because the solution to the human condition, which is a state of fear, lies in something as simple as choosing for peace even though fear seems to be justified.

The simplicity of this has to register with you in order for you to dare to reach for your peace . . . or relax into your peace when threat seems to be occurring.

Now, you look at your world every day nowadays, no matter where you are on the globe, no matter what your nationality, no matter what country you live in and identify with, and there seems to be great justification for fear. There seems to be quite a great deal of upset, of turmoil, of dissonance. And the threat doesn’t just come from your locale, the threat can be on the other side of the globe, something happening there can upset the balance where you are.

And so, even if, let’s say, you’re doing all the right things, it would seem that turmoil could arrive and destroy because of something happening half way around the globe.

So you’re finding yourselves confronted with the call for peace constantly. You’re being faced with the call to silence your mind, silence the fear, silence the rhetoric that upsets and agonizes and creates greater and greater distress.

Now I’m going to tell you something: There’s a reason for all of the, well, shall I call it “chemicalization” that is going on around the globe . . . all of the rather fundamental disturbances: Lack of order, lack of morality, lack of peace, lack of intelligence. There’s a reason for it.

I’ve used the example in the past, where if you lived in a house that was completely dark, furnished and you had learned as though you were a blind person, how to function in that house—feed yourself, bathe yourself, live, remain healthy. But let’s say, that one day illumination begins to occur . . . and slowly you can begin to make out the barest shapes and shadows. And as it increases, you see clutter, you see mess, you see cleaning that needs to be done.

As this wonderful thing called illumination or light comes forth, it seems to be a cause of distress rather than a cause of pleasure for you. It’s as though you would rather not be able to see, than to see what you’re seeing. You’re faced with a job. You’re faced with cleanup. You’re faced with, let’s say, a level of organization and order that you had never been aware of before because you couldn’t see disorder.

Now, in this turmoil that is occurring on your globe—dirt, disorder, immorality that had been hidden in the dark, economic imbalance, the means by which you humans act inhumanely toward each other—is becoming clearer and clearer. And of course, in the process it’s calling forth a change so that greater humanity is brought into the picture. That’s the point.

But you could say, the world is going to pot. You could say that the world is on the decline and that collapse in every way could occur. And the peace and the joy and the harmony that you have enjoyed for many years will be irreparably destroyed.

But that’s not the nature of Awakening. That’s not the nature of this crazy call for becoming more conscious and coming back into your right Mind and discovering what it is that is the one simple thing that will correct it all. That’s why I’m bringing up that the one simple thing arises out of fundamental peace. And fundamental peace is something you can experience involuntarily and ruggedly by failing so completely at being competent yourself, that you give up on it, knowing for a certainty you think that everything about you and everything that is meaningful will collapse and your worthlessness will shine forth and the purpose for being will be gone.

But that’s not what happens. And those of you who have experienced the blessing of having abandoned your supposed capacity to be successfully in charge understand what I’m saying. You have an experience, which you are capable of sharing with your Brothers and Sisters during these coming times as an effective way of meeting the call that’s coming forth. But also as a means of encouraging those who are studying A Course In Miracles to understand what the simple steps are no matter how complex the Course seems to be.

And this is important!

This is a time of transition. This is a time of transformation. It’s a time actually of regeneration. If you will get into your peace and observe what’s happening from there and listen for what the answer is from there, it will be a time of regeneration. Even if you don’t do that, it’s just that the regeneration will be involuntary and you will say that it’s rugged.

So I am encouraging you not to misinterpret what is happening. And don’t let your egos fly off the handle self-righteously pointing the finger at what everyone is doing and what insanity there is and what lack of love there is. As I said last week, when you engage in that, what’s the script you’re using? And how can you expect your world to reflect something different from the script you are utilizing to keep a feeling of stability and to keep a feeling of power which you are going to have to release if indeed Reality and your sanity are to come to the fore in you so that you see things differently, behave differently and reflect the truth more completely.

Oh-h, don’t say, “I know I’m not going to be able to do it.” Don’t say, “Oh, Raj, why did you have to tell me this? I half-way was looking forward to the coming year. I half-way was looking forward to getting past the next election in the United States. I was half-way positively oriented!”

Well, there’s a ploy for you . . . there’s a script for you. And there is a means of attempting to hold on to control—your definition of control—which is being used for your definition of success which means not having to give up, not having to succumb to your incapacity to be anything on your own and yield to the Father, yield into the peace of your Being which is the omnipotence and omnipresence of God…in…you.

Don’t fuss and fume about what you have to do. Don’t fuss and fume about what everyone else has to do but probably won’t do. Because that takes much more energy than the decision to become still, to silence your human will, to stop talking to yourself and start asking a question of Something other than yourself.

This is the simple means of Awakening. Why not engage in it instead of all the other folderol? Why not engage in it instead of indulging in reaction, whether it’s self-righteousness or fear when you observe the world and what’s happening. I’m here to remind you that that’s all it takes. To discourage you from attempting to do more than it takes especially when doing more than it takes creates the experience of illusion in the first place which you are suffering from and which it’s your Birthright to be Waking up from.

Be with that for a moment . . .

Be with the simplicity of it and wonder why you don’t avail yourself of it. Wonder why you keep forgetting that that’s all it takes and then engage on all of the convoluted means you use to exercise control and provide yourself with a certain sense of safety.

Let’s go into the book.

Nothing can come between what God has joined and what the Holy Spirit sees as one.¹

Simple.

But everything SEEMS to come between the fragmented relationships the ego sponsors to destroy.

Now, of course, the key word there is ‘’SEEMS.’’

But everything SEEMS . . .

. . . doesn’t actually . . .

. . . SEEMS to come between the fragmented relationships the ego sponsors to destroy.

Now I encourage you to engage a new habit. When statements like this are made as you read, I want you to add a sentence . . . here it says:

. . . everything SEEMS to come between the fragmented relationships the ego sponsors to destroy. [But it hasn’t succeeded.]

. . . everything SEEMS to come between the fragmented relationships the ego sponsors to destroy. [But it hasn’t happened.]

The one emotion in which substitution is impossible is love. Fear involves substitution by definition, for it is love’s replacement. Fear is both a fragmented and a fragmenting emotion. It seems to take many forms, and each seems to require a different form of acting out for satisfaction. While this appears to introduce quite variable behavior, a far more serious effect lies in the fragmented perception from which the behavior stems. No-one is SEEN COMPLETE. The body is emphasized, with special emphasis on certain parts, and used as the standard for comparison for either acceptance or rejection of suitability for acting out a special form of fear.

Fear embodied. Fear felt by you and believed becomes a tool you use to control.

“Oh, he has slanted eyes.” “Oh, she has very black course hair.”

You have many means that you use to distance yourself, separate yourself from and see yourself as different from others. And why do you do it? You do it because you’re afraid. You do it because you’re not in your peace. And so you use certain characteristics of another to control your behavior to keep you safe and to keep “them” in their place.

The next section is entitled:

SUBSTITUTION AS A DEFENSE

You who believe that God is fear made but one substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of . . .

. . . what?

. . . illusion for truth; of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still is what it was.

Now there, the last part of the sentence I said you could add, is in the book.

It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, . .

. . . it could have ended there but it didn’t . . .

. . . and still is what it was.

You see? The substitution hasn’t been successful. The replacement hasn’t been successful. The reason for employing substitution has not been validated and you are still innocent of attempting to deny, successfully, God and thus be offensive, thus be guilty. This is important: That one error that you substituted illusion for truth.

That one error which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it, and every special relationship which you have ever made is part of it.

Now mind you, all the complexities that are going on in the world today that seem to be fearful, that seem to be alarming, that deprive you of your peace, do not represent the truth and they do not constitute success on the part of mankind at creating something God didn’t make. You have created the illusion and the distress that accompanies the illusion. But you haven’t changed what is Real in the slightest. And although you have all of these complexities that seem to need to be straightened out, the correction of them lies in one thing: Choosing for your peace . . . engaging in the two-step . . . shutting up . . . moving into the silence, and then reaching out, desiring to know the truth that it’s your Birthright to be experiencing.

Because although you seem to have succeeded in distracting yourself from your conscious awareness of truth through the use of your imagination and your commitment to your beliefs, you haven’t stopped Knowing the truth and you haven’t stopped being the visibility and tangibility of God. And your mind hasn’t stopped being the full presence of the Holy Spirit. It just hasn’t happened. Because it hasn’t happened, all that is involved in abandoning the dream is to shift your attention.

I make it sound very simple. I make it sound too simple. If it was that simple, everyone would have Woken up. No. And the only reason everyone hasn’t Woken up is because there is such an addiction to the “hit” or the “high” of going for independence and hopefully succeeding because you believe it’s possible and your belief is where you put your trust.

You have expressed surprise at hearing how very different is reality from what you see. You do not realize the magnitude of that one error . . .

It was so vast and so completely incredible that from it a world of total unreality HAD to emerge. What else COULD come of it?

We’ve talked about this differently in the past few weeks. When you chose to get a divorce from your Father and abandon His Perspective—which was yours by Birthright—and you said, “Father, I’d rather make decisions myself, I’d rather define what everything is myself,” you had to define it as something different from God. That which is different from God is that which is unlike God. It’s a polarity.

And so, as long as you do this, you’re introducing dissonance in omnipotence and omniscience—absolutely singular infinite harmony.

Now you didn’t actually succeed. The dissonance you’re experiencing is an illusion. But you have a lot of faith in it and no one tells you consistently that, well, you’re engaging in imagination, which can have no actual result, except that while you’re trying to achieve that result you are insane, you’re not in your right Mind, you can’t experience your peace.

Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at them. But nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to further substitutions.

Now, you are watching in the world today further substitutions crumbling. You are watching clarity as to what doesn’t work, as well as to what is needed, crystallizing right where you can see them, right where you can feel them, unless you’re holding out a little bit longer to find an effective way to control all of this without having to change it and getting it to be less scary, less threatening.

You know what? It is being more difficult for every one of you to look at all of this and fool yourselves into thinking that the answer is going to come from the same place all the previous answers have come from. And this is wonderful. You’re getting tired of suffering. You’re getting tired of being afraid. And now it looks as though the cause for fear can be so completely out of your control that there’s just no hope. And it’s not true, because the practice of the holy instant is still the answer.

Seek your peace. Value sanity enough to dare to abandon your reactions, to dare to abandon your fear and give up without things getting really bad, so that your giving up is involuntary.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying, “you better do this because unknown to you things are going to be getting so bad that you will involuntarily practice the two-step and it will be rugged.” No. You are observing a natural movement of reconfiguration, the result of which will be order, I’m going to say, order of a higher magnitude. And part of it is going to come from choices you and others on your globe make for abandoning self-serving interests, selfishness and reaching beyond your normal avenues of being aware, so that in the absence of your exercise of what doesn’t work, what does work will simply become obvious to you as a natural progression, if I may put it that way, or as a natural undoing of everything that was put into place that confused everything, so that clarity naturally comes forth.

Substitutions of illusions for truth:

That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected and drawn between you and the truth.

[Repeating] The world arose to hide it, . .

. . . what world? The world of your definitions arose to hide Reality, to hide the Kingdom of Heaven . . .

. . . and [it] became . . .

. . . your definitions . . .

. . . became the screen on which it was projected and drawn between you and the truth.

And here’s the additional sentence: But it didn’t actually succeed.

For truth extends INWARD, where the idea of loss is meaningless, . .

. . . when you go into the holy place in you—the altar—which is in the center of your Being, and you ask the Holy Spirit, you ask the Father, “What is the truth here?” you are engaging in the undoing of confusion, inharmony, fear.

. . . truth extends INWARD, where the idea of loss is meaningless, and only increase is conceivable. Do you really think it strange that a world in which everything is backwards and upside-down arose from this?

Should be no surprise there. The script that’s being used denies truth and therefore, chaos, confusion, inharmony is the only thing left to experience.

For truth brought to THIS could only remain within in quiet, and take no part in all the mad projection by which this world was made.

[Repeats] For truth brought to THIS could only remain within in quiet, . .

. . . that’s why peace is so important. That’s why choosing for your peace is so important. That’s why shutting up and asking, “What is the truth here?” within, is the only way out of the illusion. Because it’s in the quiet that truth quietly awaits you . . . quietly awaits you.

Call it not sin but madness, . .

. . . what? The substitution of illusion for truth.

. . . for such it was, and so it still remains. Invest it not with guilt, . .

and I will say, invest it not with fear. Invest it not with any definitions or meanings you come up with . . .

. . . for guilt implies it was accomplished in reality.

You see? And you can add: but it was not. You see? In every paragraph you will find a confirmation of the fact that delusion hasn’t been successful and therefore, you are not in danger, therefore, you are not guilty, irreparably damned because of having succeeded at doing the impossible. You see?

[He did not read: And above all, be not AFRAID of it.] When you seem to see some twisted form of the original error . . .

. . . substituting illusion for truth . . .

. . . [rise] to frighten you, say only, "God is not fear, but love," and it will disappear.

There’s a call . . . a call that has always been present, but a call that is more pointed in the present, for you to look at the world and judge it truly, which means judge it after you have silenced your definition-making-mechanism and having asked, “Father, what is the truth here?” Because it’s the God’s honest truth that is the only thing you want to know. Because there is transformation, reconfiguration and redemption occurring now, here, to be embraced for what it is instead of resisted for what it isn’t. And it’s your task to find the experience of it through peace instead of reaction, through love instead of through fear.

Again, and I’m not going to yell it out, but peace is the answer. And finding your peace is something that every single one of you is capable of if you choose to. I am saying, be novel and choose to do it. Be irrational in other’s eyes and choose to do it, because it’s the answer.

The truth will SAVE you. It has not left you, to go out into the mad world and so depart from you. Inward is sanity; insanity is OUTSIDE you. You but BELIEVE it is the other way; that truth is outside, and error and guilt within.

If that were not true, you would look out there and you would recognize what was going on as insanity and not something to base your conclusions on, not something to base your logic and your means of gaining control on.

You’ve got to stop making what’s going on out there your god, whether it’s people behaving badly, aggressively, threateningly, whether they are pleased with you or upset with you. Don’t make gods of things out there and then govern yourselves according to the definitions you’ve made.

“Oh, if I do this no one will respect me, so I will not do it!” Wow, quite a script! In other words, you’re saying, “I’m going to abandon my integrity because if I engage in it somebody may get upset at me and I don’t know if I can take it because what they think of me is the only thing that is important to me . . . whether they respect me or not. Whether they respect me determines whether I’m real.” You see?

“They…they…they…determine whether I am real.” It’s not true. And that’s just one of the many idiotic forms that fear takes as a substitute for knowing the truth and governing you in a manner that keeps you in that dark room, where the light hasn’t shone yet and there’s dust all over the place and there is mess to clean up. But you’re not bothered, because you can’t see it and you don’t even know that it’s your Birthright to be seeing it and clean it up! And have an entirely new and different experience of wonder and of beauty and of order and of intelligence and on and on.

You but BELIEVE it is the other way; that truth is outside, . .

. . . your God is outside, that which you should base your best judgments on is out there in what all those crazy people are doing and believing and seeing when they look at you. Uh-oh . . .

[He did not read this: . . . and error and guilt within.] Your little, senseless substitutions, touched with insanity and swirling lightly off on a mad course like feathers dancing insanely in the wind, have NO substance.

But tell me, isn’t that much the way you feel when you watch the news and join in with the reaction and then be distressed and unable to sleep at night?

They fuse . . .

. . . the feathers dancing insanely in the wind.

They fuse and merge and separate, in shifting and totally meaningless patterns which need not . . .

. . . what? . .

. . . be judged at all.

They don’t require a response from you . . . they do not require a response from you. But Something when you go within and practice the two-step and the holy instant will call upon you for something. And what you are called upon to do and be from there will be transformational.

I tell you, as long as those in your world know that you think that they’re God and that you are willing to base everything you do on them, they will take control of you and keep control of you just as you take hold of them and keep control of them.

So:

They fuse and merge and separate, in shifting and totally meaningless patterns which need not be judged at all.

Doesn’t matter how much of a show the spinning around is . . . doesn’t matter how incredibly complex it is, they require no response from you. You can say, “I have no response to that.” That’s what’s called for, “I have no response to that.”

To judge them individually . . .

. . . each little feather, each little sparkle of dust that’s spinning around in the sunlight, you know . . .

To judge them individually is pointless. Their tiny differences in form are no real differences at all. NONE of them matters. THAT they have in common, and nothing else. Yet what else is NECESSARY to make them all the same?

You need to find that they’re all the same. It doesn’t matter what’s happening on Wall Street, it doesn’t matter what’s happening in the clearing houses and the banks, it doesn’t matter what governments are doing. These are not the things to be governing the use of your mind by. You’re here to be that which brings sanity into the picture because you haven’t based your actions and reactions on gods out there.

Transformation, regeneration, redemption . . . this Movement that is inevitably and actually happening is to be participated with consciously by not attempting to control it, but by learning what it is through listening, through becoming humble enough to let truth dawn on you so that you might behave in ways that promote the transformation, regeneration and redemption without eliciting resistance and fear. Resistance and fear will never be elicited when you are not engaged in controlling, period.

Every single one of you resists being controlled. You can’t stand it, but you know it’s the only way you can create so-called satisfactory situations with your Brothers and Sisters. And so you’re conflicted because you believe in using what you don’t want used on you. Well, it becomes a complex chess game where you calculate what the fifth move down is going to be so that you can remain safe.

Let them all go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turning till they disappear from sight, far, far outside you. And turn you to the stately calm within, where in holy stillness dwells the living God you never left, and Who never left you.

None of this has succeeded in undoing the presence and action of God.

The Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand, . .

[chuckling] . . . if you reach out yours to His and say, “What is the truth here? Help me. I do not want to rely on any part of my personal skill that I have designed and created and employed.” You reach out and:

The Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand, and retraces with you your mad journey outside yourself, leading you gently back to the truth and safety within. He . . .

. . . if you invited and are listening and are willing to let it in . . .

. . . brings all your insane projections and your wild substitutions which you have placed outside you to the truth. Thus He reverses the course of insanity, and restores you to reason.

There is a description of the Movement of the holy instant, when you practice it. And that is the foundation for the corrections that are being called for in your world. Because it’s time for all the junk to become visible so that you can see that it’s there and not fool yourselves into believing that it’s not there. And then clean it up. Which it’s easy to do in the light and which it’s a pleasure to do in the light. Because as you clear out the refuse, as you clear out the junk, the light illuminates the perfection underneath it that it was covering.

Participate in the transformation that is occurring by using your mind well and remembering that your greatest ally and therefore, the greatest ally of the whole world is the conscious choice for peace, because you’re finding nothing else more important than peace. Then you will be the script for redemption. And that’s your role. That’s your function.

I love you. And I look forward to being with you next week.

.

A Course In Miracles (reference pages)
Chapter 18 – THE DREAM AND THE REALITY
¹ Sparkly Book – p.423, 2^nd Par.6^th Line / JCIM – p.177, 2^nd Par.4^th Line / CIMS – p.356, 2^nd Par.5^th Line
Chapter 18 – THE PASSING OF THE DREAM
First Edition – p. 347, 2^nd Par., 6^th Line / Second Edition – p.372, 2^nd Par., 7^th Line

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