Are thoughts, then, dangerous? To bodies, YES! The thoughts that seem to
kill are those which teach the thinker that he CAN be killed. And so he
dies BECAUSE of what he learned. He goes from life to death, the final
proof he valued the inconstant more than constancy. Surely he THOUGHT he
wanted happiness. Yet he did not desire it BECAUSE it was the truth, and
therefore MUST be constant.

The constancy of joy is a condition quite alien to your understanding.
Yet if you could even imagine what it must be, you would desire it,
although you understand it not.

The constancy of happiness has no exceptions; no change of any kind. It
is unshakable as is the Love of God for His creation. Sure in its vision
as its Creator is in what He knows, it looks on everything and sees it
is the same. It sees not the ephemeral, for it desires that everything
be like itself, and sees it so. Nothing has power to confound its
constancy because its own desire cannot be shaken. It comes as
surely unto those who see the final question is necessary to the rest,
as peace must come to those who choose to heal and not to judge.

Reason will tell you that you CANNOT ask for happiness inconstantly. For
if what you desire you receive, and happiness is constant, then you need
ask for it but ONCE to have it ALWAYS. And if you do not have it always,
being what it is, you did not ask for it. For no-one fails to ask for
his desire of something he believes holds out some promise of the power
of giving it. He may be wrong in what he asks, where, and of what. Yet he
WILL ask because desire is a request, an asking for, and made by one
whom God Himself will never fail to answer. God has already given him
all that he REALLY wants. Yet what he is uncertain of, God CANNOT give.
For he does not desire it while he remains uncertain, and God’s giving
must be incomplete unless it is received.

You who complete God’s Will and are His happiness, whose will is
powerful as His, a power that is not lost in your illusions, think
carefully why it should be you have not yet decided how you would answer
the final question. Your answer to the others has made it possible to
help you be but partially insane. And yet it is the final one that
really asks if you are willing to be WHOLLY sane.

What is the holy instant but God’s appeal to you to recognize what He
has given you? Here is the great appeal to reason; the awareness of what
is always there to see, the happiness that could be always yours. Here
is the constant peace you could experience forever. Here is what denial
has denied REVEALED to you. For here the final question is ALREADY
answered, and what you ask for given. Here is the future NOW, for time
is powerless because of your desire for what will never change. For you
have asked that nothing stand between the holiness of your relationship
and your AWARENESS of its holiness.