41 Prepare you not for the undoing of what never was. If you already understood the difference between truth and illusion, the Atonement would have no meaning. The holy instant, your holy relationship, the Holy Spirit's teaching, and all the means by which salvation is accomplished would have no purpose. For they are all but aspects of the plan to change your dreams of fear to happy dreams from which you waken easily to knowledge. Put yourself not in charge of this, for you cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. Some of your greatest advances you have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats you have evaluated as success.
42 Never approach the holy instant after you have tried to remove all fear and hatred from your mind. That is
its function. Never attempt to overlook your guilt before you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is
His function. Your part is only to offer Him a little willingness to
let Him remove all fear and hatred and to
be forgiven. On your little faith, joined with His understanding,
He will build your part in the Atonement and make sure that you fulfill it easily. And with Him you will build a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith and rising even to Heaven. Nor will you use it to ascend to Heaven alone.
43 Through your holy relationship, reborn and blessed in every holy instant which you do not arrange, thousands will rise to Heaven with you. Can you plan for this? Or could you prepare yourselves for such a function? Yet it is possible because God wills it. Nor will He change His Mind about it. The means and purpose both belong to Him. You have accepted one; the other will be provided. A purpose such as this without the means is inconceivable. He will provide the means to anyone who shares His purpose.
44 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 means and purpose is an undertaking impossible for you to understand. You do not even realize you
have accepted the Holy Spirit's purpose as your own, and you would merely bring unholy means to its accomplishment. The little faith it needed to change the purpose is all that is required to receive the means and
use them.
45 It is no dream to love your brother as yourself. Nor is your holy relationship a dream. All that remains of dreams within it is that it is still a special relationship. Yet it is very useful to the Holy Spirit, Who
has a special function here. It will become the happy dream through which He can spread joy to thousands on thousands who believe that love is fear, not happiness. Let Him fulfill the function that He gave to your relationship by accepting it
for you, and nothing will be wanting that would make of it what He would have it be.
46 When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by anything, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness
in spite of fear to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one which you would rather have. He 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 is an equal threat to the other. The power of joining and its blessing lie 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. Yet 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.
47 Whichever is saner at the time when the threat is perceived should remember how deep is his indebtedness to the other and how much gratitude is due him and be glad that he can pay his debt by bringing happiness to both. Let him remember this, and say:
48
I desire this holy instant for myself that I may share it with my brother, whom I love. It is not possible that I can have it without him, or he 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 His Blessing may descend on us and keep
both
in peace.
