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Chapter 16: The Holy Instant

3. Choosing Littleness or Magnitude

Do not be content with littleness or pettiness, but be sure you understand what littleness is, and why you could never be content with it. Littleness is the offering you gave yourself in making the ego, and pettiness is the offering the ego gave back to you in return. You offered this to yourself in place of Magnitude, and you accepted it. Everything in this world appears little and petty because it is a world made out of littleness, in the strange belief that you can be in control of littleness, and that therefore littleness can content you. When you strive for anything in this world with the belief that it will bring you Peace, then you are belittling yourself, and blinding yourself to Magnitude and Glory. Glory and littleness are therefore the choices open to your striving and your vigilance. And you will always choose one at the expense of the other.

What you have not yet realized is that each time you choose, your choice is your assessment of yourself. Choose littleness, and you will not have Peace, for you will have judged yourself unworthy of It. And whatever you offer as a substitute for Peace is much too poor a gift to satisfy you.

It is essential that you accept the fact, and accept it gladly, that there is no form of littleness that can ever content you. You are free to try as many as you wish, but all you will be doing is delaying your Homecoming in Heaven. For you will be content only in Magnitude, which is your Home.

There is a deep responsibility you owe yourself, and one that you must learn to remember all the time. The lesson will seem hard at first, but you will learn to love it when you realize that it is true, and constitutes a tribute to your power. You who have sought and found littleness, remember this: Every decision that you make stems from what you think you are, and represents the value that you put upon yourself. Believe that the little can content you, and, by limiting yourself, you will not be satisfied. For your function here is not little, and it is only by remembering and fulfilling your function that you can release yourself from littleness.

There is no doubt about what your function on Earth is, for the Holy Spirit knows what it is. There is no doubt about its importance, for it reaches you through Spirit from Magnitude. You do not have to strive for Magnitude, because you already have It. All your striving must be directed against littleness, for it does require vigilance to protect your Magnitude in this world. To hold your Magnitude in perfect awareness in a world of littleness is a task that those who believe themselves to be little cannot undertake. Yet it is asked of you, in tribute to your Magnitude and not your littleness. Nor is it asked of you alone.

The Power of the Divine will support every effort you make on behalf of the Magnitude of Its dear Children. Search for the little and the petty, and you deny yourself the Divine’s Power. The Divine wills that Its Children be content only with Everything. For It is content only with Its Children, and Its Children cannot be content with less than their Creator has given them. This Course once asked you, “Would you be hostage to the ego or Host to the Divine?” Let this question be asked of yourself by the Holy Spirit in you every time you make a decision. For every decision you make does answer this question, and invites sorrow or Joy, accordingly.

When the Divine gave Itself to you in your creation, It established you as Host to It forever. It has not left you, and you have not left It. All attempts to deny Its Magnitude and make Its Children hostage to the ego cannot make little whom the Divine has joined with Itself. Every decision you make is made for Reality or for delusion, and will bring you awareness of what you decided for. The Holy Spirit will hold your Magnitude clearly and in perfect Safety in your mind, clean of all littleness and untouched by every petty gift the world of littleness would offer you. But to receive this Gift you must side with the Divine in what It wills for you.

Decide for the Divine through Spirit. For littleness and the belief that you can be content with littleness are the decisions you have made about yourself. The Power and the Glory that are in you from the Divine are for all who, like you, perceive themselves as little, and have deceived themselves into believing that littleness can be magnified by them into a sense of meaning that can content them.

Neither give littleness nor accept it. All honor is due the Host to the Divine. Your littleness deceives you, but your Magnitude is of It Who dwells in you, and in Whom you dwell. In the Name of Divine Essence, eternal Host unto Its Creator, touch no one, then, with littleness.

Celebrate the birth of Holiness into this world through joining with me who decided for Holiness for you. It is our task together to restore the awareness of Magnitude to the Hosts whom the Divine appointed for Itself. It is beyond all your littleness to give the Gift of the Divine, but not beyond you. For the Divine would give Itself through you. It reaches from you to everyone, and beyond everyone to Its Children’s creations, but without leaving you. The Divine extends forever far beyond your little world, but still in you. Yet It brings all Its Extensions to you, as Host to It.

It is not a sacrifice to leave littleness behind and wander not in vain. It is not a sacrifice to awaken to Glory. But it is a sacrifice indeed to accept anything less than Glory. Learn that you must be worthy of the Bringer of Peace, born anew in you, in honor of the Divine, Whose Host you are. You have forgotten the Meaning of Love because you have sought to purchase It with little gifts, thus valuing It too little to be able to understand Its Magnitude. Love is not little, and Love dwells in you, for you are Host to It. Your poor appreciation of yourself, and all the little offerings you have given, slip into nothingness before the Greatness that lives in you.

Holy Child of the Divine, learn now that only Holiness can content you and give you Peace. Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more than I did. It is because I learned for you that you can learn of me. I would only teach you what is yours, so that together we can replace the shabby littleness that binds the Hosts of the Divine to guilt and weakness with the glad awareness of the Glory that is in them. My awakening in you is your awakening to Grandeur. Welcome me not into what appears to be a lowly manger but into the Altar to Holiness, where Holiness abides in us in perfect Peace.

My Realm is not of this world because It is in you, and you are of your Creator. Let us join in honoring you, whose holy Self must remain forever beyond littleness. Decide with me who have decided to abide with you. I will as my Creator wills, knowing Its Will is constant and at peace forever with Itself. You will only be content with Its Will. Accept no less, remembering that everything I learned is yours. I love what my Creator loves as It does, and I can only accept what It loves as It was created, as can you.

When you have learned to accept what you truly are, you will make no more gifts to offer to yourself, for you will know you are complete, in need of nothing, and unable to accept anything for yourself. But having received Everything, you will gladly give All. The Host to the Divine need not seek to find anything. If you are wholly willing to leave awakening to the Plan of the Divine, and unwilling to attempt to grasp for Peace yourself, awakening will be given you. But think not that you can substitute your plan for the Divine’s. Rather, join with me in Its Plan, that we may release all those who believe they would be bound, proclaiming together that the Children of the Divine are Host to It. Thus will we let no one forget what you would remember. And thus will you and they remember It.

Call forth in everyone only the Remembrance of the Divine, and of the Heaven that is in them. For where you would help your sisters and brothers be, there will you think you are. Hear not their call for nightmares and littleness, but only their call for Heaven and Grandeur. Forget not that their call is yours, and answer them with me. The Divine’s Power is forever on the side of Its Host, for It protects only the Peace in which It dwells. Lay not littleness before Its holy Altar, which rises above the stars and reaches even to Heaven, because of what is given at this Altar.