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Chapter 19: The Passing of the Dream

3. Willingness instead of Preparation

The Holy Instant is the result of your determination to be holy, or as the Divine created you. It is the Answer. The desire and the willingness to let It come precede Its coming. You prepare your mind for It only to the extent of recognizing that you want It above all else. It is not necessary that you do more. Indeed, it is necessary that you realize that you cannot do more. Do not attempt to give the Holy Spirit what It does not ask, or you will believe that you have added the ego unto It, and you will confuse the two. Spirit asks little. It is Spirit Who adds the Greatness and the Might. It joins with you to make the Holy Instant far greater than you can yet understand.

It is your realization that you need do so little that enables Spirit to give so much. Trust not your good intentions because they are not enough. But trust implicitly your willingness, whatever else may enter any experience. Concentrate only on this, and be not disturbed that shadows surround your willingness. To dispel the shadows is why you are there. If you could come to awakening without shadows, you would not need the Holy Instant. Come to It not in arrogance, assuming that you must achieve the state Its coming brings with It. The miracle of the Holy Instant is in your willingness to let It be what It is. And in your willingness for this is also your acceptance of yourself as you were created, and as you will forever be.

Humbleness 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. Difficulty with the Holy Instant arises from the fixed conviction that you or your brother or sister are not worthy of It. And what is this but the determination to be as you would make yourself, rather than as you were created and will forever be? The Divine did not create Its Host and Dwelling Place unworthy of Itself. And if you believe It cannot enter where It wills to be, you must be interfering with Its Will.

You do not need the Strength of willingness to come from you, but only from the Divine’s Will. The Holy Instant does not come from your small willingness alone. It is always the result of your small willingness combined with the unlimited Power of the Divine’s Will.

You would be wrong to think that you must prepare yourself for Holiness. It is impossible to make assumptive preparations for Holiness, and not believe that it is up to you to establish the Conditions for Peace. The Divine 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. If you maintain that you or others are unworthy of learning this, then you are interfering with the Lesson by believing that you must make the learner different. It is the Lesson’s Purpose to transform the learner’s mind, which is all that need be fundamentally changed or different. You did not make the learner, nor do you have the power to make yourself or your sisters and brothers as learners different.

Would you first make a miracle yourself, and then expect one to be created for you? It is your function merely to ask the right question. The Answer has been given. Seek not to answer the question, but merely to receive the Answer as It is given. Thus, in preparing for the Holy Instant do not attempt to make yourself holy to be ready to receive It. That is just to confuse your role with Its. Atonement cannot come to those who think that they must first atone to be worthy to receive It, but only to those who offer It nothing more than simple willingness to make way for It.

Purification, or right preparation, is of the Divine alone, and therefore for you. Rather than seek to prepare yourself for the Divine, try to think thus:

I who am Host to the Divine am worthy of It. The Divine, Who established Its Dwelling Place in me, created It as It would have It be. It is not needful that I make this Dwelling Place ready for the Divine, but only that I do not interfere with Its Plan to restore to me my own awareness of my Readiness, which is eternal. I need add nothing to Its Plan. But to receive It, I must be willing not to substitute my own in place of It.

And that is all. Attempt to add more and you will merely take away the little that is asked.

Remember that you made guilt, and that your plan for the escape from guilt has been to bring atonement to guilt, that is, to make guilt a means of atonement, and thus to make awakening fearful. And it is only fear that you will add if you attempt to prepare yourself for Love. The Preparation for the Holy Instant belongs to It Who gives It. Release yourself to It Whose Function is Release. Do not attempt to assume Its Function for It. Give It only what It asks, that you may learn how little is your part, and how great is Its.

It is this that makes the Holy Instant so easy and so natural. It is only made difficult when you insist there must be more that you need do. It may be hard to accept the idea that you need give so little to receive so much. And it can be unsettling to realize that it is not personally insulting that your contribution and the Holy Spirit’s are so extremely disproportionate. This is because you are still convinced that your personal understanding is a powerful contribution to the Truth, and makes It what It is. Yet this Course has emphasized that there is nothing that you need personally understand. Awakening is easy just because It asks nothing that you cannot give right now.

Remember that it was previously your decision to make everything that is natural and easy for you seem impossible. What you believed to be impossible will nevertheless be done, if the Divine so wills it, but you would have remained quite unaware of it in your split mind. Whenever you believe the Holy Instant is difficult for you, it is because you have temporarily slipped back into thinking that you are the arbiter of what is possible, and become again unwilling to give place to One Who knows. The entire belief in levels and orders of magnitude of difficulty in miracles is based on this unwillingness.

Everything the Divine wills is not only possible, but has already happened. And that is why the past has gone, and also why it never happened in Reality. Only in your own mind, which thought it did, is its undoing needful.