Corresponding Text Section
Chapter 29: Undoing the Gap of Separation
1. Memory of the Present
The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what has truly been done in Creation. It does not add, but merely takes away. And what it takes away has long since gone, but being kept in memory appears to have current effects. This world was over long ago. The thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of them, and valued them for a while. The miracle simply shows that the past is gone, and what has truly gone has no effects. Remembering a cause no longer present can merely produce illusions of its presence, not true effects.
None of the effects of guilt are in the present. For guilt is over. In its passing went its consequences, left without a cause. Why cling to it in memory when you do not desire its effects? Remembering is as selective as perception, being its past tense. Remembering is perception of the past, as if the past were occurring now, and still were there to perceive. Memory, like perception, is a skill made up by you, to take the place of what the Divine gave in your creation. And like all the things you made in the separation, it can be used to serve another purpose, and to be means for something else. It can be used to heal, and not to hurt, if you so choose.
Nothing employed for healing represents an effort to do anything at all. Everything employed for healing is a recognition that you have no needs that mean that something must be done. It is an unselective memory, which is not used to interfere with Truth. All things the Holy Spirit can employ for healing have been given to It without the content and the purposes of separation for which they were made. They are just skills without an application, awaiting their right use. They have no dedication and no aim.
The Holy Spirit can indeed make use of memory, for the Divine Itself is present in true Remembrance. But this is not a memory of past events, but only of a present state. You are so long accustomed to believe that memory holds only what is past, that it is hard for you to realize it is a skill that can remember now. The limitations on remembering that the world imposes on it are only as vast as those you let the world impose on you. There is no inherent link of memory to the past. This link is only there if you would have it there, because only your desire made the link, and only you have held it to a part of time where guilt appears to linger still.
The Holy Spirit’s Use of memory is quite apart from time. Spirit does not seek to use memory as a means to recall and keep the past, but rather as a way to let it go. Memory simply holds the messages it receives, and does what it is given to do. It does not write the messages, or appoint what they are for. Like to the body, it is purposeless within itself. And if it seems to serve to cherish an ancient hate, and offer you the pictures of injustices and hurts that you were holding onto, this is what you asked its messages be, and this is what memory became for you. Committed to its vaults in the individual unconscious, the history of all the body’s past is hidden there. All of the strange associations made to keep the past animate and the present invisible are stored within it, waiting your command that they be brought to your consciousness to be experienced again. And thus do their effects appear to be increased by time, as memories of the past continue to be collected, when time has actually been used by Spirit to take away their cause.
Time is but another aspect of what does nothing. It works hand in hand with all the other attributes with which the Truth about yourself was sought to be kept concealed. Time itself can neither take away nor restore. And yet you make strange use of it, as if the past had caused the present, and the present had thus become a consequence in which no change can be made because its cause has gone. No real change can be made in the present if its cause is past. Real change must have a cause that will endure, or else the change will not last. Yet as you currently make use of memory, only the past is held in it, and so it is a way to hold the past against the now.
Remember nothing that you taught yourself in the past, for you were poorly taught. Who would keep a senseless lesson in their mind when they can learn and apply a sensible one? When memories of past hate in any of its various forms (frustration, anger, unkindness) appear, remember that their cause is gone. And so you cannot truly understand what they are for now. Let not the cause that you would give your memories now be what it was that made them what they were, or seemed to be. Be glad that the old cause is gone, for this is what you would be freed from. And see, instead, the new effects of a Cause accepted now, with consequences here.
These new effects will surprise you with their loveliness. The worthy new ideas they bring will be the happy consequences of a Cause so ancient that it far exceeds the span of memory that your mind conceives. This is the Cause the Holy Spirit has remembered for you, when you would have forgotten It. It is not past, because Spirit did not let It be unremembered. It has never changed, because there never was a time in which Spirit did not keep It safely in your mind. Its Consequences will indeed seem new, because you thought that you remembered not their Cause. Yet was It never absent from your whole mind, for it was not your Creator’s Will that It be forgotten by Its Children.
What you remember of the past never was in Truth. It came from causelessness that you confused with cause. It deserves only laughter when you learn that you have been remembering consequences that were causeless and thus could never be effects.
The miracle reminds you of a Cause forever present, perfectly untouched by time and interference, never changed from what It is. And you are Its Effect, as changeless and as perfect as Itself. Its Memory is not in the past, nor does It await a future. It is not revealed in miracles, which only remind you that this Cause is present. When you forgive It for your belief in your ability to miscreate, It will no longer be denied.
You who have sought to lay a judgment on your own Creator cannot understand that it is not your Creator Who laid a judgment on Its Children. You thought you denied the Creator Its Effects, yet have They never been denied. There was no time in which Its Children could be condemned for what was causeless and against the Divine’s Will. What your remembering of the past would witness to is only the fear of the Divine. Yet It has not done the thing you fear – condemning you to hell for what you believed were your unforgivable mistakes – nor have you. And so your Innocence has not been lost. The eternally perfect Divine Child needs no healing in order to be healed, even if It forgot Itself and Its Creator for an instant in a dream. In quietness, see in the miracle a Lesson in allowing true Cause to have Its Own Effects, and doing nothing that would interfere.
The miracle comes quietly into the mind that rests an Instant and is still. It reaches gently from that quiet Instant, and, from the mind it healed in quiet in that Instant, to other minds, to share the Holy Instant’s Quietness. And they will join in doing nothing to prevent Its radiant Extension back into the Mind that caused all minds to be. Born out of sharing, there can be no pause in time to cause the miracle delay in hastening to all restless minds, and bringing them an Instant’s Stillness, in which the Memory of the Divine returns to them. Their own past remembering is quiet now, and what has come to take its place will be truly remembered to some degree afterward.
The Divine, to Whose Spirit time and memory are given to use as It will, offers thanks for every quiet Instant you give It. For in that Instant is Its Memory allowed to offer all Its Treasures to Its Children, for whom They have been kept. How gladly does It offer Them unto the one for whom They were created! And your Creator shares Its Thanks, because It would not be deprived of Its Effects. The Holy Instant’s Silence that Its Children accept gives welcome to Eternity and to the Divine, and lets Them enter where They would abide. For in that Instant do the Children of the Divine do nothing that would make themselves afraid.
How instantly the Memory of the Divine arises in the mind that has no fear that would seek to keep the Memory away. This mind’s own past remembering has gone because it is filled only with Memory of the Present, leaving no room for anything else. There is no past to keep its fearful image in the way of glad awakening to present Peace. The Trumpets of Eternity resound throughout the Stillness, yet disturb It not. And what is now remembered is not fear, but rather the Cause that fear was made to render unremembered and lost. The Stillness speaks in gentle Sounds of Love the Children of the Divine remember from before their own use of remembering came in between the present and the timeless Cause, to shut these Sounds out.
Now are the Children of the Divine at last aware of present Cause and Its benign Effects. Now do they understand that what they made before is causeless, having no effects at all. The past has done nothing. And, in seeing this, they understand that they never had a need for doing anything, and that they never did anything that changed Reality. Their Cause is One with Its Effects. There never was a cause besides It, nothing that could generate a past or future outside of Its Will. Its Effects are changelessly Eternal, beyond fear, and past the world of illusions and belief in separation entirely.
What must be lost to no longer perceive the causeless? And where is sacrifice, when Memory of the Divine has come to take the place of loss?
What better way to close the little gap between illusions and Reality than to allow the Memory of the Divine to flow across it, making it a Bridge that an Instant will suffice to reach beyond? For the Divine has closed this gap with Itself. Its Memory has not gone by and left a stranded Child forever on a shore where they can glimpse another shore that they can never reach. Its Creator wills that Its Children be lifted up and gently carried over. It has built the Bridge, and it is It Who will transport Its Children across It. Have no fear that It will fail in what It wills. Nor that you be excluded from the Will that is for you.
