Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell. Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE. The picture of yourself you offer him you show YOURSELF, and give it all your faith. The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is NO pain and NO reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence.
The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins.
Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved. Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.
Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true.
It is not Will for Life, but wish for death, that is the motivation for this world. Its ONLY purpose is TO PROVE GUILT REAL. No worldly thought or act or feeling has a motivation other than this one. These are the witnesses that are called forth to be believed, and lend conviction to the system they speak for and represent. And each has many voices, speaking to your brother and yourself in different tongues. And yet to both the message is the same. Adornment of the body seeks to show how lovely are the witnesses for guilt. Concerns about the body demonstrate how frail and vulnerable is your life; how easily destroyed is what you love. Depression speaks of death and vanity of real concern with anything at all.
The strongest witness to futility, which bolsters all the rest and helps them paint the picture in which sin is justified, is sickness in whatever form it takes. The sick have reason for each one of their unnatural desires and strange needs. For who could live a life so soon cut short, and NOT esteem the worth of passing joys? What pleasures COULD there be that will endure? Are not the frail ENTITLED to believe that every stolen scrap of pleasure is their righteous payment for their little lives? Their death will pay the price for all of them, if they enjoy the benefits or not. The end of life must come, whatever way that life be spent. And so take pleasure in the quickly passing and ephemeral.
These are NOT sins, but witnesses unto the strange belief that sin and death are real, and innocence and sin will end alike, within the termination of the grave. If this were true, there WOULD be reason to remain content to seek for passing joys, and cherish little pleasures where you can. But in this picture is the body NOT perceived as neutral and WITHOUT a goal inherent in itself. For it becomes the symbol of reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there to see, so that the cause can NEVER be denied. Your function is to PROVE to him that sin can HAVE no cause. How futile MUST it be to see yourself a picture of the proof that what your function IS can never be.
The Holy Spirit's picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it ALL signs of accusation and of blamefulness. Pictured WITHOUT a purpose, it is seen as neither sick nor well, nor bad nor good. No grounds are offered that it may be judged in ANY way at all. It has no life, but neither is it dead. It stands apart from ALL experience of fear OR love. For now it witnesses to NOTHING yet, its purpose being open, and the mind made free again to choose what it is FOR. Now it is not condemned, but waiting for a purpose to be GIVEN, that it may fulfill the function that it will receive.
Into this empty space, from which the GOAL of sin has been removed, is Heaven free to be remembered. Here its peace can come, and perfect healing take the place of death. The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."
The simple way to let this be achieved is merely this; to let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you KNEW its purpose was to foster guilt. For this insists your crippled picture is a lasting sign of what it represents. This leaves no space in which a DIFFERENT view, ANOTHER purpose, can be given it. You do NOT know its purpose. You but gave ILLUSIONS of a purpose to a thing you made to hide your function from yourself. This thing WITHOUT a purpose CANNOT hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, ITS purpose and YOUR function both be reconciled at last, and seen as one.
The ego IS an ally of time, but NOT a friend. For it is as mistrustful of death as it is of life, and what it wants for you, IT cannot tolerate. The ego wants YOU dead, but NOT itself. The outcome of its strange religion MUST therefore be the conviction that it can pursue you BEYOND the grave. And out of its unwillingness for you to find peace, even in the death it wants for you, it offers you immortality in hell. It speaks to you of Heaven, but assures you that Heaven is not for you. How can the guilty hope for Heaven?
The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. Their nightmares and their fears are all associated with it. The ego teaches that hell is IN THE FUTURE, for this is what ALL its teaching is directed to. HELL IS ITS GOAL. For, although the ego aims at death and dissolution as an end, IT does not believe it. The goal of death, which it craves for you, leaves IT unsatisfied. No-one who follows the ego's teaching is without the FEAR of death. If death were thought of merely as an end of pain, would it be FEARED?
We have seen this strange paradox in the ego's thought-system before, but never so clearly as here. For the ego must SEEM to KEEP FEAR FROM YOU, to keep your allegiance. Yet it must ENGENDER fear, in order to maintain ITSELF. Again, the ego tries, and all too frequently succeeds, in doing both, but using dissociation for holding its contradictory aims together, so that they SEEM to be reconciled. The ego teaches thus: Death is the end, as far as hope of Heaven goes. But, because you and ITSELF cannot be separated, and because it cannot conceive of its OWN death, it will pursue you still, BECAUSE YOUR GUILT IS ETERNAL.
Such is the ego's version of immortality. And it is THIS the ego's version of time supports. The ego teaches that Heaven is here and now, because the FUTURE is hell. Even when it attacks so savagely that it tries to take the life of someone who hears it temporarily as the ONLY voice, it speaks of hell even to him. For it tells him hell is HERE, and bids him leap from hell into oblivion. The only time the ego allows anyone to look upon, with some amount of equanimity is the PAST. And even then, its only value is that it is no more.
How bleak and despairing is the ego's use of time! And how TERRIFYING! For underneath its fanatical insistence that the past and future be the same, is hidden a far more insidious threat to peace. The ego does not advertise its final threat, for it would have its worshippers still believe that IT can offer the ESCAPE from it. But the belief in guilt MUST lead to the BELIEF IN HELL, and ALWAYS DOES. The only way in which the ego allows the fear of hell to be experienced is to BRING HELL HERE, but ALWAYS as a foretaste of the future. For no-one who considers himself as DESERVING hell, can believe that punishment will end in peace.
The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There IS no hell. Hell is only what the ego has made OF THE PRESENT. The BELIEF in hell is what PREVENTS you from UNDERSTANDING the present, because YOU ARE AFRAID OF IT. The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to Heaven, as the ego drives to hell. For the Holy Spirit, Who knows ONLY the present, uses it to UNDO the fear by which the ego would make the present useless. There is NO ESCAPE from fear, in the ego's use of time. For time, according to its teaching, is nothing but a teaching device for COMPOUNDING guilt, until it becomes all-encompassing, and demands vengeance forever.
The Holy Spirit would undo ALL of this NOW. Fear is NOT of the present, but ONLY of the past and future, which do not exist. There is no fear in the present, when each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow reaching out into the future. Each instant is a clean, untarnished birth, in which the Son of God emerges FROM the past, into the present. And the present EXTENDS FOREVER. It is so beautiful and so clean and free of guilt, that nothing but happiness is there. No darkness is remembered, and his immortality and joy are NOW.
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 is born, you will go forth in time without fear, and with no sense of change WITH time.
Time is inconceivable without change, and holiness does NOT change. Learn from this instant more than merely 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. And change is an illusion, taught by those who could not 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. Whenever you are tempted to be dispirited by the thought of 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 how 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.
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 instant 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. How long is an instant? It is as short for your brothers, 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. How long is an instant? As long as it takes tore-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.
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 it 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.