ARCIM

Daily Lesson 194 ~
July 13

I place the future into the Hands of the Divine.

Today’s idea takes another step toward undelayed awakening, and a giant stride it is indeed! So great the distance is that it encompasses, it sets you just short of Heaven, with the Goal in sight and obstacles behind. Your feet have reached the Gardens that welcome you to the Gate of Heaven, the quiet Place of Peace where you await with Certainty the Final Step of the Divine. How far are we progressing now from the world of illusions! How close are we approaching to our Goal! How short the journey still to be pursued!

Accept today’s idea and you will have passed all anxiety, all pits of hell, and all darkness of depression, obsession with error, thoughts of separation, and devastation brought about by guilt. Accept today’s idea and you will have released the world from all imprisonment by loosening the heavy chains that seemed to lock the door to Freedom on it. You are awakening, and your awakening thus becomes the Gift you give the world because you have received It.

In the Holy Instant no depression can be felt, pain experienced, or loss perceived. In the Holy Instant sorrow cannot be set upon a throne and honored dutifully. In the Holy Instant no one can seem to die. And so each Instant given unto the Divine to be made holy as time passes by, with the next one given It already, is a time of your Release from sadness, pain, and even death itself.

The Divine holds your future as It holds your past and present. They are One to It, and so they should be One to you. Yet in this world the temporal progression still seems real. And so you are not asked to understand the lack of sequence really found in time. You are only asked to let the future go, and place it in the Divine’s Hands. And you will perceive by your experience that you have laid the past and present in the Divine’s Hands as well, because the past will punish you no more, and future dread burdening the present will now be meaningless.

Release the future. For the past is gone, and what is present, freed from future dread and the past’s bequest of grief and misery, of pain and loss, becomes the Holy Instant in which time is set free of the illusions of past and future where it was compelled to run its pitiless, inevitable course. Then is each instant that was bound to time transformed into a Holy Instant when the Light that was kept hidden in the Divine’s Child is freed to bless the world. Now are the Divine’s Children free, and all their Glory shines upon a world made free with them, to share their holiness.

If you can understand the lesson for today as the deliverance it really is, you will not hesitate to give as much consistent effort as you can to let it become a part of you. As it becomes a thought that focuses your mind, a reflex in your problem-solving repertoire, and a way of quick response to the temptation to mis-project, you extend your learning to the world. And as you learn to see awakening in all things, so will the world perceive that it is awakened.

What worry can beset those who give their future to the loving Hands of the Divine? What can they suffer? What can cause them pain, or bring experience of loss to them? What can they fear? And what can they regard except with Love? For they who have released themselves from all fear of future pain have found their Way to present Peace, and certainty of Care the world can never threaten. While their perception may yet be faulty, it will never lack Correction. They are free to choose again when they have been mistaken; to change their mind when they have wandered from the Way.

Place, then, your future into the Hands of the Divine. For thus you call Its Memory to come again, replacing all your false thoughts with the Truth of Love. Think you the world could fail to gain thereby, and every living being in this world not respond with healed perception? They who entrust themselves to the Divine have also placed the world within the Hands to which they have themselves appealed for Comfort and Security. They lay aside the illusions of the world along with those of themselves, and offer Peace to both.

Now are we awakened indeed. For in the Divine’s Hands we rest untroubled, sure that only Good can come to us. If we forget, we will be gently reassured. If we accept an unforgiving thought, it will be seen replaced by Love’s Reflection. And if we are tempted to hurt as expression of our hurt, we will appeal to Spirit, Who guards our rest to make the choice for us that leaves the temptation to mis-project far behind. No longer is the world perceived as our adversary, for we have chosen that we be its friend.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 18: The Reality of the Holy Relationship

 

2. The Real World and Heaven

Can you imagine how beautiful those you completely forgive will be to you? In no fantasy have you ever looked upon or imagined anything so lovely. Nothing you perceive here, sleeping or waking, comes near to such Loveliness, and nothing will you value like this, nor hold so dear. Nothing you remember that made your heart seem to sing with joy has ever brought you even a little part of the Happiness this sight will bring you. For you will see the Child of the Divine. You will behold the Beauty that the Holy Spirit loves to behold, and that It thanks the Creator for. Spirit was created to see this for you, until you learn to see It for yourself. And all Its Teaching leads to seeing It and giving thanks with It.

This Loveliness is not a fantasy. It is the Real World, bright and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open Sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has been forgiven, and there are no fantasies to hide the Truth. The transition between the world of illusions and the Real World is so little and so easy to achieve that you could not believe it is the meeting place of worlds so different. Yet this transition is the strongest thing that touches at all on the world of illusions. This little step, the smallest step ever taken by anything, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into Eternity, and beyond all ugliness into Beauty that will delight you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at Its Perfection.

From the Real World, crossing the Bridge into Heaven is still the greatest Accomplishment of all in the Divine’s Plan of Atonement. All else is learned, but this Step is accomplished by the Divine Itself, complete and wholly perfect. No one except It Who gave awakening to Its Children could complete It thus.

The Real World, in its Loveliness, you learn to reach. Fantasies and belief in enchantment magic are all undone, no one and nothing remains still bound by them, and by your own forgiveness you are free to see. And what you see is only what you have allowed to be with the blessing of your forgiveness on it. And with this final blessing of the Divine’s Children upon themselves, real perception, born of the new perspective that they have learned, has served its purpose.

The stars will disappear in Light, and the Sun, which opened up the world to Beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning will then have no function.

Nothing can ever change in Heaven. There there are no shifts or shadings, no differences, and no variations that made perception possible. The perception of the Real World will be so short in duration compared to the eons spent lost in the world of illusions that you will barely seem to have time to thank the Divine for it. For the Divine will take the Final Step swiftly when you have reached the Real World through your beholding, and have been made ready for Heaven.

The Real World is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the old world that you perceive without forgiveness. The Great Transformer of perception will undertake with you the careful searching of the mind that made the old world, and uncover to you the seeming reasons for your making it. In the Light of the Reasoning that It brings as you follow It, It will show you that there is no reason for the world of illusions at all. Each spot Spirit’s Interpretation and Evaluation touch grows alive with Beauty. And what seemed ugly in the darkness of your lack of Reason is suddenly released to Loveliness. Not even what the Children of the Divine made in madness could be without a hidden Spark of Beauty that Gentleness could release.

All this Beauty will rise to bless your sight as you perceive the world with forgiving eyes that see at last. For forgiveness literally trans-forms perception, and lets you see the Real World, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing all illusions that had twisted your perception and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of the Divine’s Perfection. From the forgiven world, the Children of the Divine are lifted easily to their Home. And there they know that they have always rested there in Peace.

Even awakening will become a dream and vanish from their mind. For awakening is the end of dreams, and with the closing of the dream will have no meaning. For who could dream that there could ever be need of awakening who is fully awake in Heaven?

How much do you want awakening? It will give you the Real World, vibrant with readiness to be given you. The eagerness of the Holy Spirit to give you this is so intense that It would not wait, although It waits with patience. Meet Its Patience with your impatience at delay in meeting It. Go out in gladness to meet with your Awakener, and walk with It in trust, out of this world, and into the Real World of forgiveness and Beauty.