Corresponding Text Section
Chapter 27: The Transition to Holy Ground
7. All Things Work Together for the Good Now
One remaining problem that you have is that you perceive an interval between the time that you forgive and the time that you believe you will receive the benefits of forgiveness and of trust. This problem merely reflects the little that you would keep between yourself and your sisters and brothers, that you might be a little separate. For time and space are one illusion that takes different forms. If this illusion has been projected far outside your mind, you think of it in terms of time. The nearer it is brought to where it is, the more you think of it in terms of space.
There is a distance that you would keep apart from one another. And this space you also perceive as time, because you still believe you are external to each other. This makes complete trust not yet possible, because you don’t believe that trust would settle every problem now. Thus do you think it safer to remain a little careful, and a little watchful of interests perceived as separate. From this perception, you can’t conceive of receiving what forgiveness offers now. The interval you think is in between the giving and receiving of the gift forgiveness gives seems to be one in which you sacrifice and therefore suffer some kind of loss. You have faith in eventual awakening but not immediate results.
Awakening is always immediate when it is chosen and it comes. Unless you so perceive it, you will continue to be afraid of it, believing that the risk of loss is likely between the time you have embraced awakening’s Purpose as yours, and when Its Effects will come to you. In this form is the error that is the source of fear still obscured. Awakening would remove forever the space you still perceive between you and your sisters and brothers, and let you become as One without delay. And it is here that you fear the loss would lie.
Do not project this fear of loss onto time, for time is not the adversary you have believed it to be. Time is as neutral as the body is, to be used for the purpose assigned to it. If you would keep a little space between you still, this means you want a little time in which a little forgiveness is withheld. This makes the interval between the time in which forgiveness is withheld even a little and when its gifts are fully received seem dangerous, with hidden suspicion justified. But space between you is only apparent in the present, and cannot be perceived in the future. It therefore is only within the present that this illusion can be seen beyond. Future loss is not your actual fear. But present joining in total trust is your misgiving.
Who can find the cause of misgiving except in the present? A past cause is gone, and a future cause as yet has no effects other than those imagined. And therefore must it be that if you fear, it is believed there is a present cause. And it is this that needs correction, not a future state.
The plans you make for your safety are all laid within the future, where you cannot plan with certainty, given its unknown state. No purpose has been given the future as yet in your experience, and what will happen then has as yet no cause. Who can predict effects without a cause? And who could fear effects unless they thought that these had been caused in the present, and judged disastrous now? Yet how many times have you been certain that the future would be disastrous based on present causes perceived, to find that this future was not as feared?
Belief in separation arouses fear, and both the cause and effect of fear look forward and back in time, but do not see what is here and now. Yet only here and now the cause of fear must be, if this cause’s effects already have been judged as fearful. And in overlooking the here and now is the cause of fear – the belief in separation – protected and kept separate from healing. For a miracle is now. It is already here, in present Grace, within the only interval of time that fear has overlooked, but which is also the only time there is. The working out of all correction to fear in the miracle takes no time at all. But the acceptance of the working out can seem to take forever as long as you fear the Release from the belief in separation.
The change of Purpose the Holy Spirit brings to your relationship to make it holy has in it all Effects that you will see. They can only be seen now. Why wait until They unfold in time, while fearing that They may not come, although They are already here?
You have been assured that all things that come from perfect Love and are called to Its Purpose work together for the Good. And yet it seems as if this is not always so in the appearances and experiences of the world. It is difficult to credit in advance the Good in the form of a feared disaster. Nor is there any sense in this idea. Why should the Good appear in evil’s form? And is it not a deception if It does? For when we behold the Presence of Divine Love, we see there can be no disaster but only Blessing. The Cause of the Good is always here now, in the Presence of Divine Love, or the Good would not be able to be seen at all.
Why then are not Its Effects apparent now as well? Why would they be perceived in the future if not seen now? Do not be content with sighing and “reasoning” that you do not currently understand cause and effect, but will someday, and that then the meaning of your experiences or their appearances will be clear. This is not Reason for it is unjust, and clearly hints at suffering until the time of liberation comes around.
Given a change of Purpose for the Truth and for the Good, there is no reason for an interval in which disaster may seem to strike in the present, to be perceived as good someday in the future, but now in form of pain. This would be a sacrifice of now, which could not be what the Holy Spirit asks of you, for what It gives to you is without a cost at all. Yet this illusion of an interval between forgiveness and the blessing it gives has a cause that, though untrue, must be already in your mind. And this illusion is only one effect that this cause in your mind engenders, and one form in which its outcome is perceived. This interval in time, when retribution is perceived to be the form in which the Good may appear, is another aspect of the little space that lies between you, unforgiven still.
Be not content with future happiness. It has no meaning, and is not your just reward. For you have cause for Freedom now. What profit is Freedom in the form of imprisonment? Why should Deliverance be disguised even temporarily as disaster? Delay is senseless, and the reasoning that would maintain that effects of present cause must be delayed until a future time is merely a denial of the fact that cause and consequence must be one, and be received as one. Turn not to time to be delivered from, but to the little space you cherish between you still. And do not let the space be disguised as time, and so preserved because its form is changed, and what it is not recognized. The Holy Spirit’s Purpose now is yours, and Its Happiness is yours now as well.
