Corresponding Text Section

Chapter 16: The Holy Instant

4. Receiving and Giving Perfect Communication

This Course can be immediately learned unless you prefer to believe that what the Divine wills takes time. And this belief means only that you would rather delay the Recognition that Its Will is, beyond time. The Holy Instant is this instant, and every instant. The instant you want to be holy, is. The instants you would not have be holy are lost to you. You must decide when the Holy Instant is. Delay It not. For beyond the past and future, in which you will not find It, It stands in shimmering readiness for your acceptance.

Yet you cannot bring the Holy Instant into glad awareness while you do not want It, for It holds the whole Release from littleness. Your practice must therefore rest upon your willingness to let all littleness go. The Instant in which Magnitude will dawn upon you is only as far away as your desire for It. As long as you don’t desire It fully, and cherish littleness instead, by so much is It far from you. By so much as you want It, will you bring It nearer.

Think not that you can find awakening in your own way, and have it. Give over, in exchange for the Divine’s, every plan that you have made for your awakening. Only Its Plan will content you, for there is nothing else that can bring you Peace. For Peace is of the Divine, and of nothing beside the Divine. Be humble before your Creator, and yet great in It. And value no plan of the ego in place of the Plan of the Divine. For you leave your place in Its Plan – which you must fulfill if you would join with me – empty by your decision to join in any plan except the Divine’s. I call you to fulfill your holy part in the Plan that It has given to the world for its Release from littleness.

The Divine would have Its Host abide in perfect Freedom. Every allegiance to a plan of awakening that is apart from It diminishes the value of Its Will for you in your own mind. And yet, it is your mind that is the Host to It. Would you learn how perfect and immaculate is the holy Altar on which your Creator has placed Itself? This you will recognize in the Holy Instant, in which you willingly and gladly give over every plan but Its. For there is Peace, perfectly clear, because you have been willing to meet Its Conditions.

You can receive the Holy Instant anytime and anywhere you want It. In your practice, give over every plan you have accepted for finding Magnitude in littleness. It is not there. Use the Holy Instant only to recognize that you alone cannot know where Magnitude is, and can only deceive yourself in thinking you can.

I stand within the Holy Instant, as clear as you would have me be. And the extent to which you learn to be willing to accept me is the measure of how short the time will be wherein the Holy Instant will be yours. I call to you to make the Holy Instant yours at once, for the Release from littleness in the mind of the Host to the Divine depends on willingness, and not on time.

The reason this Course is clear is that Truth is simple. Complexity is of the ego, and is nothing more than its attempt to obscure the obvious. You could live forever in the Holy Instant, beginning now and reaching to Eternity, except for a very simple reason. Do not obscure the simplicity of this reason, for if you do it will be only because you prefer not to recognize it, and not to let it go. The simple reason, stated simply as what it is, is this: the Holy Instant is a time in which you receive and give perfect Communication. This means, however, that it is a time in which your mind is open both to receive and give. It is the Recognition that all minds are in Communication forever. This Recognition therefore seeks to change nothing, but merely to accept Everything.

How can you receive and give perfect Communication when you would prefer to have “private” thoughts, and keep them? The only way you could do this is to deny the perfect Communication that makes the Holy Instant what It is. You believe that it is possible to harbor thoughts you would not share, and that awakening lies in keeping at least some of your thoughts to yourself alone. For in private thoughts, believed to be known only to yourself, you think you find a way to keep for yourself alone what you would have, and to share what you would share. And then you wonder why it is that you are not in full Communication with all your sisters and brothers and with the Divine, Who surrounds and holds All together in perfect Harmony and Beauty in Its Oneness.

Every thought you would keep hidden shuts perfect Communication off, but only because you would have it so. It is impossible to recognize perfect Communication while breaking communication holds value to you. Ask yourself honestly, “Would I want to have perfect Communication, and am I wholly willing to let go forever everything that interferes with It?” If the answer is “no” or “maybe” then the Holy Spirit’s Readiness to give perfect Communication to you is not enough to make It yours, for you are not yet ready to share It with Spirit. And Spirit cannot come into a mind that has decided to oppose It. For the Holy Instant is given and received with equal willingness, being the acceptance of the single Will that governs all Thought.

The necessary condition for the Holy Instant does not require that you have no thoughts that are not pure. But it does require that you have none that you would keep. Innocence is not of your making. It is given you the Instant you would have It. But It would not be Atonement if there were no need for Atonement, that is, if perfect Innocence were already remembered and awakened to.

You will not be able to accept perfect Communication as long as you would hide It from yourself or Spirit. For what you would hide is hidden to you, though not to Spirit. In your practice, then, try only to be vigilant against deception, and seek not to protect the thoughts that you would keep private. Let the Holy Spirit’s Purity shine them away, and bring all your awareness to the readiness for the Purity of Thought It offers you. Thus will It make you ready to acknowledge that you are Host to the Divine, and hostage to no one and to nothing.