The holy instant is the Holy Spirit’s most useful learning device for
teaching you love’s meaning. For its purpose is to suspend judgement
ENTIRELY. Judgement always rests on the past, for past experience is the
basis on which you judge. Judgement becomes impossible without the past,
for without it you do not understand anything. You would make no attempt
to judge, because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not know
what anything MEANS. You are afraid
of this because you believe that, WITHOUT the ego, all would be
chaos. Yet I assure you that, without the ego, all would be LOVE.

The past is the EGO’S chief learning device, for it is in the past that
you learned to define your own needs, and acquired methods for meeting
them on your own terms. We said before that to limit love to PART of the
Sonship is to bring guilt into your relationships, and thus make them
unreal. If you seek to separate out certain aspects of the totality, and
look to them to meet your imagined needs, you are attempting to use
separation to SAVE you. How, then, could guilt NOT enter? For separation
IS the source of guilt, and to appeal to it for salvation is to believe
you are alone. To be alone IS to be guilty. For to experience yourself
as alone is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to
attack reality.

You cannot love parts of reality and understand what love means. If you
would love unlike to God, Who KNOWS no special love, how CAN you
understand it? To believe that SPECIAL relationships, with SPECIAL love,
can offer you salvation is the belief that separation IS salvation. For
it is the complete EQUALITY of the Atonement in which salvation lies.
How can you decide that special aspects of the Sonship can give you more
than others? The PAST has taught you this. Yet the holy instant teaches
you it is not so.

Because of guilt, ALL special relationships have some elements of fear
in them. And this is why they shift and change so frequently. They are
not based on changeless love alone. And love, where fear has entered,
cannot be depended on because it is not perfect. In His function as
Interpreter of what you have made, the Holy Spirit USES special
relationships, which YOU have chosen to support the ego, as a learning
experience which points to truth. Under His teaching, EVERY relationship
becomes a lesson in love.

The Holy Spirit knows no-one is special. Yet He also perceives that you
have MADE special relationships, which He would purify, and not let you
destroy. However unholy the reason why you made them may be, He can
translate them into holiness by removing as much fear as you will let
Him. You can place any relationship under His care, and be sure that it
will not result in pain, if you offer Him your willingness to have it
serve no need but His. All the guilt in it arises from YOUR use of it.
All the love from His. Do not, then, be
afraid to let go your imagined needs, which would destroy the
relationship. Your ONLY need is His.

Any relationship which you would substitute for another has not been
offered to the Holy Spirit for His use. There IS no substitute for love.
If you would attempt to substitute one aspect of love for another, you
have placed LESS value on one and MORE on the other. You have not only
SEPARATED them, but you have also judged against BOTH. Yet you had
judged against yourself first, or you would never have imagined that you
needed them as they were not. Unless you had seen yourself as WITHOUT
love, you could not have judged them so like you in lack.

The ego’s use of relationships is so fragmented that it frequently goes
even farther; one part of one aspect suits its purposes, while it
prefers different parts of another aspect. Thus does it assemble reality
to its own capricious liking, offering for your seeking a picture whose
likeness does not exist. For there is nothing in Heaven or earth that it
resembles, and so, however much you seek for its reality, you cannot
find it because it is not real.

Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and although this is
not so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven
to them here. In the holy instant no-one is special, for your personal
needs intrude on no-one to make them different. Without the values from
the past you WOULD see them all the same, and like YOURSELF. Nor would
you see any separation between yourself and them. In the holy instant,
you see in each relationship what it WILL be when you perceive only the
present.

God knows you NOW. He remembers nothing, having ALWAYS known you exactly
as He knows you now. The holy instant parallels His knowing by bringing
ALL perception out of the past, thus removing the frame of reference you
have built by which to judge your brothers. Once this is gone, the Holy
Spirit substitutes His frame of reference for it. His frame of reference
is simply God. The Holy Spirit’s timelessness lies only here. For in the
holy instant, free of the past, you see that love is in you, and you
have no need to look WITHOUT and snatch it guiltily from where you
thought it was.

ALL your relationships are blessed in the holy instant, because the
blessing is not limited. In the holy instant, the Sonship gains AS ONE.
And united in your blessing, it BECOMES one to you. The meaning of love
is the meaning God gave to it. Give to it any meaning APART from His,
and it is impossible to understand it. Every brother God loves as He
loves you; neither less nor more. He needs them all equally, and so do
YOU. In time, you have been told to offer miracles as Christ directs,
and let the Holy Spirit bring to you those who are seeking you. Yet in
the holy instant, you unite directly with God, and ALL your brothers
join in Christ. Those who are joined in Christ are in no way separate.
For Christ is the Self the Sonship shares, as God shares His Self with
Christ.

Think you that you can judge the Self of God? God has created It BEYOND
judgement, out of His need to extend His Love. With Love in you, you
have no need EXCEPT to extend it. In the holy instant there is no
conflict of needs, for there is only ONE. For the holy instant reaches
to eternity, and to the Mind of God. And it is only there love HAS
meaning, and only there CAN it be understood.

It is impossible to use one relationship at the expense of another, and
NOT suffer guilt. And it is equally impossible to condemn part of a
relationship and find peace WITHIN it. Under the Holy Spirit’s teaching,
ALL relationships are seen as total commitments, yet they do not
conflict with one another in any way. Perfect faith in each one, for its
ability to satisfy you COMPLETELY, arises only from perfect faith in
YOURSELF. And this you cannot have, while guilt remains. And there WILL
be guilt as long as you accept the possibility, and CHERISH it, that you
can make a brother what he is not because YOU would have him so.

You have so little faith in yourself because you are unwilling to accept
the fact that perfect love is in YOU. And so you seek without for what
you cannot FIND without. I offer you my perfect faith in you, in place
of all your doubt. But forget not that my faith must be as perfect in
all your brothers as it is in you, or it would be a limited gift to YOU.
In the holy instant, we share our faith in God’s Son because we
recognize, together, that he is wholly worthy of it, and in our
appreciation of his worth, we CANNOT doubt his holiness. And so we love
him.