The miracle of the holy instant lies in your willingness to let it be what it is.  And in your willingness for this lies also your acceptance of yourself as YOU were meant to be.

Sounds like a simple idea.  It is, but everyone tends to make it complicated.

The miracle of the holy instant lies in your willingness to let it be what it is.

And I’m going to read it with this emphasis:

It lies in your willingness to let it be what [it] is.

You see?  You don’t know what it is.  And that’s why you’re still dreaming.  That’s why you’re still experiencing life in the Kingdom of Heaven as just the human condition. 

Your willingness to let the holy instant work lies in your recognition that you don’t know what it is and that’s why you’re asking.  And the key is, when you’re asking, to make no assumptions whatsoever and let it be what it is and in the process, educate you as to what it is . . . put you in the position of learning what you didn’t know.  So the key is not to try to be prepared when you lean into the holy instant.  Just be willing.

And in your willingness for this lies also your acceptance of yourself as YOU were meant to be.

Yes.  You as YOU were meant to be, you as you divinely Are, are the presence of attention.  Not the problem-solver, not the intellectual corrections officer.  Your task, your purpose, is to be the presence of attention where you let Creation reveal itself to you as your conscious awareness of Being, which amounts to letting God’s Perspective fill you because God’s Perspective is your true Perspective.

Now it’s really quite simple if you stop to think about it.  If you’re busy thinking, if you’re busy trying to be a problem solver, if you’re busy trying to do things your way, you are not listening, are you.  You’re not in a mode of attention where your mind is still.

Now, it’s very simple.  The difference between being in a state of attention and being in a state of assertion is the difference between being Awake and being asleep.  It really is that simple.  It really is that fundamental.

Now . . .

. . . in your willingness for this lies also your acceptance of yourself as YOU were meant to be.

Not arguing with it anymore, not fighting for the last chance to be in charge.  Now, that’s going to leave you in a position where you could say all the meaning has gone out of your life.  All the meaning you’ve been able to give yourself is gone because you’ve abandoned the assertive role—the role of  initiator.

Now that’s humiliating to the ego.  But when it’s embraced without resistance, it’s called humility.  And it isn’t meaningless.  As it says here, continuing:

Humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness.

. . . meaninglessness, inconsequentialness.  No.

Humility will never ask that you remain content with [them].  But it DOES require that you be NOT content with less than greatness . . .

. . . now if the sentence ended there, that could be very satisfying to you.  And you could slip right out of the opportunity to Wake up.  But here’s what it actually says:

Humility . . . DOES require that you be NOT content with less than greatness which comes not of you.

You’ve got to be content with greatness that you didn’t initiate, that you didn’t develop, that you didn’t create and therefore that you cannot get credit for.  Let me read it again:

Humility . . .

. . . your Birthright, that out of which your fulfillment arises . . .

. . . will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it DOES require that you be NOT content with less than greatness which comes not of you.

Your difficulty with the holy instant, your difficulty with the two-step, your difficulty with engaging in what will prompt your Awakening, arises from your fixed conviction that you’re not worthy of it.

Well, you know, that’s what the ego says.  But what it really means is that it requires you to abandon something important to you, so important to you that you’re perfectly willing to lie to yourself and say that your fulfillment is something you’re not worthy of and therefore, you can’t have it!  Pretty slick.

Your difficulty with the holy instant . . .

. . . as something practical, as something worth engaging . . .

. . . arises from your fixed conviction that you are not worthy of it.

Your fixed conviction that you’re not worthy of it is your armor . . . it’s the means by which you avoid having to abandon authority that is all important to you.  That’s all.  It’s a lie that you say to yourself.  And it keeps you safe, dreaming.  And what is this, but the determination to be as you would make yourself.  You see?  You, through thinking . . . you, through not being silent . . . you through not engaging in the two-step at all, make of yourself something unworthy of that which arises out of the two-step:  Awakening—Waking up to the truth, rediscovering who you Are, rediscovering your Birthright and embodying it because you’re not resisting it in any way with arguments and lies.

God did not create His dwelling-place unworthy of Him.

[Repeats] God did not create . . .

. . . you . . .

. . . His dwelling-place, to be unworthy of Him.  And if you believe He cannot enter where He wills to be, you must be INTERFERING with His Will.

You see?  You see, it’s not because you’re not worthy of it, but your interfering with your Father’s Will, which is for you to be sane, not suffering from insanity, being able to clearly experience yourself as His Son, His Daughter—His direct expression in which all that He is, is embodied fully.

That’s what makes you a worthy dwelling place for Him.  It’s not as though He had any choice, you know. [chuckles] There aren’t multiple dwelling places for Him.  There are the places where He is expressing Himself, called “you” and you . . . and you . . . and you . . . and everyone.

You do not need the strength of willingness to come from YOU, but only from HIS Will.

Now we’re beginning to step onto a difficulty here, because you want to play a part.  You think you need to play a part.  Your whole state of existence as an independent entity has revolved around your intelligence, your reasoning, your capacities, your definitions and that and those therefore constitute the normal activity of an entity like you.

And so, you think that in your process of Waking up, you’re going to continue to be the one authorizing the Awakening by taking certain steps.  And so, you’re going to be willing to Wake up.  And in the process you will in all likelihood, create the definitions of what your willingness means and where your willingness is going to take you.  And because you will have given some good definitions that you can believe, you’ll put yourself behind the effort.  You’ll give permission to go forward.  But all you’re doing is fulfilling your plan, your idea of what the two-step and what the awareness of holiness will mean.  You see?

And so you’re stuck.  You’re stuck in the place where your Birthright can’t be experienced because you’re not in a state of listening—of attention.

The holy instant does not come from your little willingness alone. It is always the result of your small willingness combined with the unlimited power of God’s Will. You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to PREPARE yourself for Him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for holiness, and NOT believe that it is up to you to establish the conditions for peace. GOD has established them. They do not wait upon your willingness for what they are.

You see?  Oh-h . . . so insulting!  The more we go along, the less there is for you to do and the more pejorative the words are that are used to describe what you’re doing when you’re bringing your willingness and not doing less, not doing nothing, not being still, not just being the presence of attention.  Whew! It is insulting and you know it.  Because when you actually, genuinely decide to reach out to the Father, you become clearly aware that you’re not comfortable with what your joining with the Father will mean for you.

I mean, after all to say, “Not my will be done, but Thine . . .” is insulting to someone who, through the practice of his will becomes something Real.  To abandon it, necessarily means that you will become unreal.  And that is what is frightening, that is what is insulting.

It is impossible . . .

. . . nevertheless . . .

. . . to make arrogant preparations for holiness, and NOT believe that it is up to you to establish the conditions for peace. GOD has established them. They do not wait upon your willingness for what they are. Your willingness is needed only to make it possible to TEACH you what they are.

You know what?  It’s very simple.  You do have apparently, the capacity to think.  You do apparently have the capacity to reason.  And you have the capacity to use logic.  Those are not meaningless but they are used by you to practice and establish meaninglessness.  Now their use is for one thing: Logic, thinking, reasoning are all available to you to utilize when someone is telling you the truth that goes beyond your present sense of things.

You read the scriptures, you read holy books, you read and embrace spiritual ideas and they all get blended into reasonableness for you.  Now the purpose is for them to bring you to a place where you can reasonably abandon control because reason used in relationship to what you’ve learned, what you’ve been taught, tells you that God is Love.  It tells you that God is your Source.  It tells you that when you’re joined with Him you are in your peace and you are in the place of experiencing total fulfillment, not only apparently by yourself, but with involvement with all of Creation and all of the Brotherhood.

These things help you arrive at a point where you can say, “Father . . .” you see, abandoning the independence . . . “Father, what is the truth here?  Father, what is Your Perspective on this?  How do you see this part of the human condition as it truly Is, being the Kingdom of Heaven that it actually Is, and my being the holy Son of God that I actually Am?  It is clear enough to me that the way I have described things in my request of you, Father, I can dare to abandon my control, my need for authority, and the need for an ego hit if I’m successful in exercising that authority and I am going to shut up!  I’m going to let out a sigh . . . I’m going to release my tension and I’m going to turn my attention to You with devotion.  And I will listen until I hear.  Because I know you are waiting for this exact moment where I desire to join with You again.”

You see, that’s the proper use of logic and thinking and reasoning.  To help you arrive at a point where you can conceive that there is no vulnerability associated with coming back into your right Mind as a result of joining with the Father to say, “Father, how do you see things?  Show me what it’s my Birthright to be experiencing.  Show me my holiness.”  You see?

If you maintain you are unworthy of learning this, you are interfering with the lesson by believing that you [can] make the LEARNER different.

You, the learner.

You did not make the learner, nor CAN you make him different.

The learner is the one you think you are when you don’t know who you Are.  The learner is the one you think you are when you don’t know that you are the holy Son or Daughter of God.

You did not make the learner, nor CAN you make him different. Would you first make a miracle yourself, and then expect one to be made FOR you?

Here’s the simplicity of it:

YOU merely ask the question. The answer is GIVEN.

It’s a Gift.

Seek not to answer it, but merely RECEIVE the answer as it is given.

And you know that you will seek to answer it yourself.  And if you don’t seek to answer it, you will after having asked, overwhelm yourself with all the arguments of why you can’t have the answer, why you don’t want the answer and why you’re going to be unwilling to receive it.

“Oh, it’s going to change my life too drastically!  Oh, there are so many things I want to do that, of course, when I’m Awake, I’m not going to be able to do.  Oh, I’m not going to do it because doing it doesn’t respect me.  I have to abandon self-respect to do this.  Oh, I have emergencies to take care of that require my personal attention, my personal evaluation, and I must attend to those before I can possibly take time to sit down, shut up, and listen for what the answer might be . . .” even though the answer might be far superior and far more instantaneous than the one you will come up with as a result of your own personal effort.  You see?

Seek not to answer it, . .

. . . even though you’re likely to . . .

. . . but merely RECEIVE the answer as it is given.

Remember, you don’t know the answer.  And the answer is going to take you in a direction you haven’t been in yet, because if you had been in it, you would be Awake right now.

So I’m sorry, there’s nothing useful for you to utilize in the process of Awakening, except whatever has helped you arrive at a point of saying “Thy Will, not mine be done.  Father, I lean into You on purpose and I will introduce nothing that will interfere with my willingly falling into Your Arms and Your Support and Your Insight and Your Perspective” . . . and on and on.

In preparing for the holy instant, do not attempt to make yourself holy to be ready to receive it.

Do you see how silly that is?

In preparing for the holy instant, do not attempt to make yourself holy to be ready to receive it.  That is but to confuse your role with God’s. Atonement cannot come to those who think that THEY must first atone, but only to those who offer it nothing more than simple willingness to make way for it.

To make way for it to present itself to you and by virtue of its presentation, change you, cause learning to occur, because you didn’t interfere with the learning by introducing theories and concepts or justifications or denials of it.  You see?  You see, the simplicity of it is, you could say, found in the complete absence of a need for you to do anything relative to it except to invite it.  Whew!

You will find that one of the biggest arguments against it is, “I don’t have time.”  “I don’t have time to be quiet.”  “I don’t have time to listen.”  And it’s only after you have pursued your solutions and failing that you finally arrive at a point where you’ll say, “I need to sit down and be quiet.  I need help.  I can’t do it by myself,” which means, “I must not be the one who needs to be involved in the correction of this problem.  It’s the Father, in whose Presence and in my willingness to receive of Him I will find that there is no problem to solve.  It’s disappeared.  Correction has apparently occurred.

Purification . . .

Did you ever think that purification would be a matter of cleansing your mind about all of your thoughts, beliefs, concepts, definitions, that purification is the filtering out of what doesn’t belong in what is to be a simple state of attention—not filled with thoughts or ideas or concepts or definitions?

Purification is of God alone, and therefore for you. Rather than seek to prepare yourself for Him, try to think thus:

"I who am host to God AM worthy of Him.

He Who established His dwelling-place in me created it as   

He would have it be.

It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, . .”

“It is not needful that I make it ready for Him,

But only that I do not interfere with His plan to restore to me my   

own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal.

I need add nothing to His plan.

But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my own in place of it."

Beautifully  simple  and  simply  beautiful. 

Now it should be easy to see the meaningfulness of this with reference to the point at which you said, “Father, I’d rather see it my way.  Father, I’d rather do it my way.”  In order to Wake up you have to undo that.

“I need add nothing to His plan.

But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my own in place of it."

The whole problem . . . the experience of the human condition—sin, sickness, death, suffering—is the result of your having substituted your own in place of the Father’s Will.

It’s so simple.  And therefore, the correction is simple.

But through my talking and through your study of the Course and through your study of other Spiritual works where truth is revealed, you are able through reason, thinking and logic to arrive at a point where you can dare not to substitute your own in place of His.

You’re on your way out.  You are on your way out of the illusion that you’re in something that never could have actually happened.  Never could the Kingdom of Heaven have been translated into the human condition—a material world and universe—therefore it never happened.  But in your firm belief that it has, because you made the definitions up, incorrect as they were, and you believe them and you base your existence upon them . . . you’re lost.  You are incapable of seeing the Kingdom of Heaven that you’ve misinterpreted.  But you’re on your way out.  You’re on your way back into your sanity.

“I need add nothing to His plan.

But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my own in place of it."

And that is all.

Four words . . . the biggest four words there are.

And that is all. Add more, and you will merely TAKE AWAY the little that is asked.

Because you’ve switched back into being the authorizer, you’ve switched back to being on your own.  You’ve switched back into the mindset that causes the Kingdom of Heaven to be seen as the human condition and a material world and universe, even though the Kingdom of Heaven hasn’t changed.

Remember you made guilt, and that your plan for the escape from guilt has been to bring Atonement TO it, and make salvation fearful.

Okay.  I know some of you still will argue about that you made guilt, but the moment you said, “Father, I’d rather see it my way.  Father, I am getting a divorce.  Father, I am turning away from You and paying attention only to myself,” two things came into the picture . . . fear and guilt.  Your decision to abandon the Father, to become independent in your own right, created fear and guilt.  That’s just the way it is.

Remember you made guilt, and that your plan for the escape from guilt has been to bring Atonement TO it, and make salvation fearful.

Why would that be?  Well, if you’re going to bring atonement to your illusion, you know that atonement is going to invalidate your illusion.  It’s going to invalidate you and you’re going to be faced with what you’re faced with right now, which is the fear that you’re going to become meaningless and that you will never again be able to be meaningful in anyway.  And so that makes atonement fearful.  You see?  And it’s not true.

And it is only fear that you will add, if you prepare YOURSELF for love.

If you prepare yourself.  You say:  Prepare yourself for the holy instant.  Prepare yourself for holiness . . .

. . . prepare YOURSELF for love.

You know, there’s a beautiful statement:  “Love inspires, illumines, designates and leads the way.” ²

Again:  “Love inspires, illumines, designates and leads the way.”

How can you prepare yourself for love?  You need to be humble enough, to be quiet enough so that inspiration can enter you, so that you might be lifted up by the inspiration that love brings.  You can’t prepare the inspiration for yourself that’s going to lift you up.  You can’t prepare for love.  All you can do is become still and make the invitation.  Love waits for you to invite it in.  When you let it in, you feel inspired.  And every one of you have had experiences of inspiration brought by love that lifted you out of some situation or condition and helped move you and lead you and support you on the way out, with a peace that you couldn’t possibly have brought into the picture all by yourself.

So this is an easy way for you to understand that it is only fear that you will add if you prepare yourself for love and what the alternative is to let love disclose to you through inspiration what heals.

The preparation for the holy instant belongs to Him Who gives it.

Not him who receives it.   So if you are going to be prepared for the holy instant that you are choosing for, then all you need to bring to this event is joyful inquisitiveness:  “How is the Father going to prepare me for the holy instant?”  You see?  To think that you have to prepare yourself is to busy yourself with something that will only delay the Father’s preparation of you, which will occur when you become still.

Release yourselves to Him Whose function is release.

Release yourselves to Him Whose function is release. Do not assume . . .

. . . take on . . .

. . . His function for Him. Give Him but what He asks, that you may learn how little is your part, and how great is His.

Now here we are, we’re going to address it directly:

It is this that makes the holy instant so easy and so natural. You make it difficult, because you insist [that] there must be more that you need do. And it is very hard for you to realize that it is not personally insulting that your contribution and the Holy Spirit’s are so extremely disproportionate. You are still convinced YOUR understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it is. [And] Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing.

Just keeps hammering away.

Salvation is easy just BECAUSE it asks nothing that you cannot give RIGHT NOW.

But it asks something that you’re unwilling to give right now, cause it’s a sacrifice of you and your integrity.  You know, it’s like going to a casting agent for a movie, “Don’t you have at least a small bit part for me?  Can I stand in the crowd in the background almost out of sight?  Cannot my presence add something to the scene?”

Thank God, it’s not required.  You don’t have to be in the movie.  You don’t have to ask for a place in the Kingdom of Heaven because you already have a place.

This is absolutely beautiful . . . absolutely simple . . . and yet it seems impossible.

Well, let me ask you this:  What would have happened if Wilbur and Orville Wright had said, “You know, in all of existence no man has ever flown, only the birds.  Birds were meant to fly not man.  There’s no way to do it.”  What if they used that argument:  That in all of time, in all of human existence no man ever got off the ground, therefore it can’t happen now.

I’m telling you that it can happen.  It’s time for it to happen.  And you’ve got to take a look and see just how much faith and commitment you bring to your crazy thoughts, to your negative thoughts, to your thoughts of what is possible and impossible.  But remember, what makes things seem possible and impossible to you are simply the way you have linked together beliefs, ideas and misunderstandings and some bits and pieces of truth.  Your release from it comes in your abandoning of what you have such great commitment to.

You know, many of you say, “Well, there’s no reason not to have some new technological gadget.  There’s no reason to not have a machine that can levitate us off the ground.  There’s no reason not to explore new inventions.”  And you will go after those new inventions with great vigor. 

Well, I tell you what, be like Wilbur and Orville Wright and go after something that’s never happened before.  Go after your holiness.  Go after the experience of your sanity, which means, go after the experience of the Kingdom of Heaven that you’re in the middle of but not experiencing because you’re so damn sure that your definitions about matter and the way the universe works proves that everything I’m talking about can’t possibly be true.

Stop arguing yourself into defeat.  And dare to explore a little, dare to be radical a little.

Forget not that it has been your decision to make everything that IS natural and easy for you impossible.

That’s sanity.  It’s the truth that can release you quite suddenly.  It’s very helpful.

Forget not that it has been your decision to make everything that IS natural and easy for you impossible. What you believe to be impossible will BE, if God so wills it, . .

. . . you can’t just decide what can or cannot be and have it be so.

What you believe to be impossible will BE, if God so wills it, but you will remain quite unaware of it. If you believe the holy instant is difficult for you, it is because you have become the arbiter of what is possible, and remain unwilling to give place to One Who KNOWS.

Yield . . . give up into . . . abandon authority for paying attention and letting something else fill your attention, something other than you fill your attention.

The whole belief in orders of difficulty in miracles is centered on this.

What was it again? 

If you believe the holy instant is difficult for you, it is because you have become the arbiter of what is possible, and remain unwilling . . .

[Repeats] . . . remain unwilling to give place to One Who KNOWS.

The Father, the Holy Spirit—that which is nothing more than your right Mind—your Guide or me.

The whole belief in orders of difficulty in miracles is centered on this.

Your . . .

. . . unwilling to give place to One Who KNOWS.

And that’s what causes order of difficulty in miracles.

Everything God wills is not only possible, . .

. . . listen to this:

Everything God wills is not only possible, but has already HAPPENED. And that is why the past has gone. It NEVER happened in reality.

All of the illusions never happened in Reality.  All of the problems, which cause you to say, “I don’t have time to practice the holy instant,” never happened.

It NEVER happened in reality. Only in your minds, which thought it did . . .

[Repeats] Only in your minds, which thought it did, is its undoing needful.

You see?  It’s a little bit of misdirection that occurs.  You see a problem and you say, “I’ve got to attend to correcting that problem.”  But the only thing that causes the problem to seem to be real is a glitch in your mind.  And if you want to correct the problem or deal with it, you’re going to have to let it go and attend to the glitch that caused it to seem to be real.  And caused it to seem to be something that it was more important for you to give your attention to than attending to that in your mind—the glitch.  And attending to the glitch is accomplished through the holy instant.

Now, this is the simplicity of it, this is the beauty of it.  It also seems to be the great impossibility of it and something which you can’t let go of your doubt about.  But you have to persist.  Like Orville and Wilbur Wright, persist.  It’s the way Home.

I love you all.  And I look forward to being with your next time.