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Chapter 19: The Passing of the Dream

4. Happy Dreams Come True

Prepare you now for the undoing of what never was. If you already understood the difference between Truth and illusion, Atonement would have no meaning. The Holy Instant, your holy relationship, the Holy Spirit’s Teaching, and all the Means by which awakening is accomplished, would have no purpose. For they are all just aspects of the Plan to change your dreams of fear to happy dreams, from which you awaken easily to Knowledge. Do not put yourself in charge of this, for you cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. You have judged some of your greatest advances as failures, and some of your deepest retreats as successes.

Don’t approach the Holy Instant after you have tried to remove all fear and hatred from your mind. That is Its Function. Don’t attempt to see beyond your guilt before you ask the Holy Spirit’s Help. That is Its Function. Your part is only to offer Spirit a little willingness to let It remove all fear and hatred from your mind, and to accept your forgiveness by extending it. On your little faith, joined with Its Understanding, It will build your part in the Atonement, and make sure that you fulfill it easily. And with Spirit you will build a Ladder planted in the solid rock of faith, and rising even to Heaven.

Nor will you use this Ladder to ascend to Heaven alone. Through your holy relationships, born anew and blessed in every Holy Instant, which you did not arrange, countless sisters and brothers will rise to Heaven with you. Can you plan for this? Or could you prepare yourself for such a function? Yet this Ascension is possible, because the Divine wills It. Nor will It change Its Mind about It. The Purpose and Means both belong to It. You have accepted one, and the other will be provided. A Purpose such as this without the Means being provided is inconceivable. The Divine will provide the Means to everyone who shares Its Purpose.

Happy dreams come true not because they are dreams, but only because they are happy. And so they must be loving. Their message is, “Thy Will be done,” and not, “I want it otherwise.” The alignment of Divine Purpose and Means is an undertaking beyond your current understanding. You do not even fully realize that you have accepted the Holy Spirit’s Purpose as your own. And of yourself you would merely bring inappropriate means to Its Accomplishment. The little faith Spirit needed from you to change your purpose is all that is still required to receive the Means and use Them.

It is no delusion to love your sisters and brothers as yourself. Nor is your holy relationship a dream. All that remains of dreams within it is that it still has the appearance of being a special relationship. Yet at every stage it is very useful to the Holy Spirit, Who has a specific Function for it. All your forgiven relationships are the happy dreams through which Spirit can spread Joy to countless sisters and brothers who have believed that Love is fear, not Happiness. Let Spirit fulfill the Function that It gave to your relationships by accepting this Function for you. And everything will be provided that will make of the relationships what Spirit would have them be.

When you feel that the holiness of your relationship is threatened by anything, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness, in spite of fear, to let It exchange that moment for the Holy Instant that you would rather have. It will never fail in this. But forget not that your relationship is one, and so it must be that whatever threatens the Peace of one of you is an equal threat to the other. The Power of Joining, and Its Blessing, rest in the fact that it is now impossible for either of you to experience fear alone, or to attempt to deal with it alone. Never believe that this is necessary or even possible.

But just as this is impossible, so is it equally impossible that the Holy Instant come to either of you without the other. And it will come to both at the request of either. Whoever is able to be in their right mind at the time any threat is perceived, remembering how deeply they are connected to the other, and how much gratitude is due them, may be glad that they can give this by bringing Happiness to both. Let them remember this, and say:

I desire this Holy Instant for myself that I may share It with my sisters and brothers, whom I love. It is not possible that I can have It without them, nor they without me. Yet it is wholly possible for us to share It now. And so I choose this Instant as the one to offer to the Holy Spirit, that Its Blessing may be with us, and keep us in Peace.