Chapter Three

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The End of Time

Time is the measure of change, the march of change. Without change, there would be no time. Eternity has one dimension: always. Eternity is not a dimension or a kind of time; It has nothing whatsoever to do with time. All things eternal are unchanging, forever remaining as they were created. Time was invented to make change seem real. This was the purpose given it: To replace what is unchanging with what only changes, and make that changing seem real.

Time is described as having three dimensions: the past, the present, and the future. They are related to each other through a kind of sequencing. What is the present becomes the past as time “moves on”; and what is anticipated, not yet here, is thought of as the future. This future then becomes the present as it is reached by experience and, in turn, becomes the past as it leaves immediate experience and becomes memory.

Time is a kind of trick, not at all what it seems to be. As experienced in this world, it seems to control your life, to set limits on it. “Time marches on” and “Time waits for no man” are expressions of the belief in time and its power over you. Time has no power over you unless you grant it. Time and space are in your mind; you invented them and then forgot this fact. They were projected as the backdrop, the context, in which separation appears and plays out its effects. Separation could not exist without them.

Time, space, and a world of separation and change, arise together or not at all. When the separated mind first began to divide itself, time and space were projected along with form. Through the invention of form, did separation, difference, and change become manifest; perception then arose as means to “prove” their reality and maintain it.

Perception’s role is to be witness to the reality of what you want to be true, of what you want to believe. It perceives what you want it to perceive, and this is interpreted as “proof.” The world you see is a reflection of what is in your mind, nothing more. Your thoughts have made it, and your continuing allegiance to those thoughts maintain it.

Whenever you decide to change your mind, to change your thought system, the world you see will change accordingly. The world will always reflect back to you what you think and believe; it cannot be otherwise. The choice is always given you to decide which of two worlds you want to see: the illusory world you have made, or the world in which Truth is reflected, also an illusion, but with one important difference. You have made the decision you want to see truly, through the Mind of the Holy Spirit; and His Vision shows you a world in which the reflection of Heaven and the Truth behind all appearances greet you, and the Love of God is everywhere and cannot be denied.

The real world rises to your perception because you have chosen Truth over illusion. When illusion is your choice, that is all you will see; the face of Truth will not be seen. Perception, like all experiences of this world, is a choice you are making. Everything you do is a result of what you think it’s for. If an action fulfills your belief in value, you find it good. If it does not, you will avoid it. The perception of value is the point around which all your actions revolve. What you value, you seek. What you don’t value, you ignore. And what you value negatively, you avoid. To seek, ignore, or avoid, defines your behavior and determines your goals.

In this world you value and seek illusion and its continuation. You ignore Truth, defend yourself against It, or avoid It. Such is your life. Yet your Self waits for your return. It knows only what is true for it knows not illusion. You long to return to your Self with all your heart, but this longing is buried beneath the cloud of desire and ignorance that darkens your mind and obscures the memory of Truth.

Memory and Purpose

When the memory of Truth returns has already been determined. Your task is to reach that point. To attain the necessary condition in which Truth returns to awareness and sets you free, is the only purpose for life in this world. The ego has many different purposes it will assign the world, if you so choose. Each purpose is meaningless, but will appear meaningful as long as the ego is your chosen guide. Every purpose will fail as its shoddy results are recognized, yet another will rise to take its place. And so it will go while you continue to seek purpose and meaning where it cannot be found. The ego cannot assign purpose to life for it understands nothing, and purpose rests on understanding.

Purpose is found by listening to the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit. He knows the only purpose possible in a world of pain and separation where God is forgotten and peace cannot be found. He will teach it to you and help you learn it, if you allow Him.

The purpose you see and believe in sets the course of your life. Every human life is an expression of the purpose it serves. That purpose may be conscious or unconscious, recognized or unrecognized, but it will determine your direction, circumstances, and goals. Purpose is meaning, and values express or are derived from meaning. All together, they provide the center around which, from which, your life develops.

Purpose gives life meaning and direction. There are but two possible, and they are completely opposite: real or spiritual purpose, and superficial or egoic purpose. The ego’s purpose may present itself in many forms, each apparently different and offering rewards that seem to differ. They differ but in form, for the content of all is the same. They offer you nothingness and reward your faithful adherence to the ego’s purpose with death.

The ego’s goal for you is death, no matter how attractive the purpose which leads you there appears to be. To follow the direction set by a purpose whose goal is your death, must be insane. If you were truly aware of where all purposes given by the ego lead, you would renounce them immediately. Your unawareness of what is directing your life and why, keeps you trapped in meaningless pursuits. Life lived in a state of unawareness about who you are, will only lead you nowhere.

The Holy Spirit knows who you are in Truth, and He leads you away from death to Life. If you will accept the purpose He gives to life as your own, you will leave death behind forever. But you must be willing to give up the false identification with the ego. This error leads you to accept the ego’s thought system as your own, and all other errors then follow. The ego will not let you choose what is truly in your interest, for to do so would result in its disappearance. It goes to great lengths to obscure the fact that you are not the ego.

The ego is a part of your mind. It lives in your mind and dominates the attention function of the mind, as long as you allow it. To so allow is to turn over your mind to the ego’s thought system, and by so doing accept its premises and motivations. This leads, of course, to following its purpose. To follow the purpose given you by the ego is to choose pain, sickness, suffering, and death.

The ego is the part of your mind that is unreal; experience that appears in the mind identified with what is unreal, is also unreal. The solution to the error of misidentification begins with the recognition you are not the ego, and that your mind is most fundamentally the consciousness or awareness in which thoughts, feelings, impulses, and impressions or perceptions appear. This means you are free to choose the thoughts you want and disregard, or choose against, the rest. You are free in principle but not in fact. So long accustomed to identifying with the thoughts, perceptions, and experiences of separation, and the egoic thought system, the freedom to choose has been lost. The very idea has vanished from your awareness, and through the automatic, unconscious, and continuous identification with what you are not, illusion has become your reality, your identity in your experience.

Free to Choose

As long as you are absorbed in, and identified with, what you are not, you cannot experience what you are in Truth. In any moment, you will be one or the other, but never both. You are given the opportunity to choose Truth every moment, but you must make use of it. Your responsibility is to become aware of what passes through your mind at all times. In order to exercise the ability to choose between two alternatives, you must become aware of the automatic tendency to choose, to identify with the egoic thought stream. To do so is to give up your freedom to choose and simply allow past habit to dominate mind and experience. This keeps you locked into narrow, repetitious patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. No space is given for freedom to enter your life, for the present is lost to you. Freedom is of the present, only the present.

To be free to choose, you must be present in your mind and aware of your thought process. This puts you in position to choose what you want to think. To be unaware is to be at the mercy of whatever is passing through your mind any given moment. To be free is to choose freedom, and thus choose against what limits you and keeps you in bondage. Freedom requires the acceptance of responsibility for what you think and do. Only those who are totally responsible can be truly free.

Whenever you choose to be what you are not, you are deciding against your freedom. Freedom is only possible when you are being your Self. To be something other than what you are, is a state of bondage. To not know who you are and what your purpose is, is not freedom. You have forgotten your Self, and have wandered in a dream, lost and alone. Yet somewhere in your mind, the memory of what you are still calls to you, although you cannot hear it. The ego’s shrill voice drowns out the still, small voice of Spirit, for Spirit, the only Power in the universe, will not do battle or oppose. Perfection does not recognize imperfection or illusion. It simply shines it away by being Itself.

Your task and responsibility is to become aware of all that clouds and obstructs your most Holy Mind, and decide against it in each and every case. The Truth of what you are needs no help in being what It is, but you have lost It by banishing It from your awareness. This need not be. What has taken the place of Truth in your mind must be recognized and given up with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Allegiance must be withdrawn from the ego and from all that you have learned to value under its tutelage. Everything that it taught you is false, and has hurt you. If the Self is to return to your awareness as your Identity, you must invite and welcome It. This cannot be done while you are actively denying and resisting It. To choose the ego as your identity, as your self, consciously or unconsciously, is to deny your Identity in Spirit. You cannot be both, just as you cannot serve two masters. The belief that you can, leads to all kinds of errors, conflicts, and confusion.

Only God is real. Only what God has created shares His Reality. Everything else is mere imaginings, projections of a mind that has lost awareness of its Source and true Being. Lost in a dream of its own making, it seems to live in a form, a body, surrounded by other forms, each separate from all others. It is born, lives a short while, then dies. While it lives, it suffers pain, loss, sickness, and loneliness, is attacked and attacks. Such is life in separation from your Creator.

To heal the separation is the function of the Holy Spirit. He guides you step by step through the undoing of your mind, of the false belief system. He teaches you the Truth, giving you true ideas to replace illusions. He gives you spiritual vision that you may see the real world, the reflection of Truth in the dream. He takes you back to the Wholeness of your Mind, and the remembrance of your Father. All He needs from you is your willingness; the willingness to turn your life over to His direction, the willingness to let Truth back into your mind, to let go all that obstructs It.

The Self that you are, waits for your return. It has been waiting since the separation, and It will wait until you are ready to welcome It back. You could be reunited with your Self in an instant if you were to desire this wholly, and this only. Because this desire is weak and partial, the reunion seems to take time, even a long time. How long it takes is your decision, for willingness is needed, and nothing can or will be forced upon you. Always is your free will respected, and never will it be violated.

Freedom and the Present

Time itself is meaningless. Yet like anything you have made, it can be used for a different purpose. To the Holy Spirit, time is to be used for learning until learning is complete. Then time is no more for there is no need of it. To follow the Holy Spirit’s direction, is to save time. When you know the purpose of life and its only goal, the emphasis then becomes to save time.

You have been here long enough, separate from your Self and your Creator. There is no more need to suffer, to prolong the journey. Transformation is now; it does not wait on time, yet uses time to accomplish its goal. When you see time purely as means to be used to reach the goal which ends time, you will be using time rightly. If time is not used rightly, it functions as the background in which the senseless journey continues, a journey which goes nowhere and ends in death.

To abide in the present is to use time constructively. It is in and through the present that spiritual transformation takes place. Through the healing of the present, the past is released and the future set free. To live in the present is to assure a future unlike the past. Your journey unfolds in the present and extends itself through a future free from the dark shadow of the past. The past must be healed. The habitual patterns of thought and behavior that govern and control your life, must be brought to full awareness, given up, and replaced with forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the gate to Heaven; without forgiveness is escape impossible. The belief in attack keeps the mind prisoner to fear. Forgiveness is the recognition that attack is impossible and has never occurred. Forgiveness is the decision against fear, for it stems from Love’s perfect understanding. This understanding is defenselessness, the laying down of all defenses.

Defenses are a part of the belief in attack. No one needs defenses unless they believe they can be attacked. You believe in the reality of attack because you believe you can and have attacked your brother. If you can attack, it then follows, you can be attacked. Forgiveness demonstrates this is untrue by showing you the unreality of all attack. By healing the perception of separation, you learn that you are literally attacking yourself. You are always the first victim of your attempt to attack, no matter what the outward appearance.

When forgiveness becomes perfect, is perfectly established in your mind at all times and in all circumstances, you have come to the end of learning. What happens then is the ultimate fruition of your willingness to return to God, and cannot be described.

Until then you must exercise willingness constantly by forgiving your brothers, all situations and circumstances, and the entire world of appearances, without exceptions. To hold on to one exception, will keep attack alive in your mind, and Love will be absent. To make exceptions is to refuse to relinquish the belief in the reality of the world of separation. The world must be given up entirely or you will remain a willing prisoner of what you have made..

The choices you have made since time began, only perpetuate your imprisonment. You must choose again if you would be free, not once but again and again, even every moment. Mind is continuously active and its activity never ceases; that is its nature. Every day, every hour, every minute, and even every moment, you are choosing between two opposite thought systems. The ego represents illusion; the Holy Spirit represents Truth and the way back. And which you choose becomes your reality. To choose illusion, and through the power of mind make its effects real in your experience, is to choose nothingness; and through your choice you will suffer the pain of separation from your purpose, your function, and your Self.

To let the Holy Spirit guide your choices is to exercise your freedom in a world where freedom is absent. While the past continues to determine your present, you will never be free. Freedom is found in the present when the mind has been freed from the habitual functioning established in the past. In the present, you come face to face with Reality, if you so choose. Reality will, however, not be apparent if the mind is dulled by its past associations and habits of perception. Reality is accessible only to a mind that is bright, alive, and focused in the present. To let the mind wander in the past or project the future, is to miss the present entirely.

Only a quiet mind, resting in the present, can encounter Truth. An undisciplined mind, an untrained mind, cannot attain or maintain the necessary condition to directly experience its true Being. The purpose of spiritual discipline, of mind training, is to achieve just that quietness and stability of mind in which Spirit reveals Itself as you.