And
thus it cancels out the interference to what has been done. It does
not add, but merely takes away. And what it takes away is long since
gone, but being kept in memory, appears to have immediate effects.
This
world was over long ago. The
thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of
them and loved them for a little while. The
miracle but shows the past is gone, and what has truly gone has
no effects. Remembering a cause can but produce illusions of its
presence, not effects.
All
the effects of guilt are here no more. For guilt is over. In its
passing went its consequences, left without a cause. Why
would you cling to it in memory if you did not desire its effects?
Remembering
is as selective as perception, being its past tense. It is perception
of the past as if it were occurring now, and still were there to
see. Memory,
like perception, is a skill made up by you, to take the place of
what God gave in your creation. And like all the things you made,
it can be used to serve another purpose, and to be the means for
something else. It
can be used to heal and not to hurt, if you so wish it be.
Nothing
employed for healing represents an effort to do anything at all.
It
is a recognition that you have no needs which mean that something
must be done. It is an unselective memory, which is not used to
interfere with truth. All things the Holy Spirit can employ for
healing have been given Him, without the content and the purposes
for which they have been made. They are but skills without an application.
They await their use. They have no dedication and no aim.
The
Holy Spirit can indeed make use of memory, for God Himself is there.
Yet this is not a memory of past events, but only of a present state.
You
are so long accustomed to believe that memory holds only what is
past, that it is hard for you to realize it is a skill that can
remember NOW. The
limitations on remembering the world imposes on it are as vast as
those you let the world impose on you. There
is no link of memory to the past. If
you would have it there, then there it is. But only your desire
made the link, and only you have held it to a part of time where
guilt appears to linger still.
The
Holy Spirit’s use of memory is quite apart from time. He does
not seek to use it as a means to keep the past, but rather as a
way to let it go.
Memory
holds the message it receives, and does what it is given it to do.
It does not write the message, nor appoint what it is for. Like
to the body, it is purposeless within itself. And if it seems to
serve to cherish ancient hate, and offers you the pictures of injustices
and hurts which you were saving, this is what you asked its message
be, and this is what it is. Committed to its vaults, the history
of all the body’s past is hidden there. All of the strange
associations made to keep
the
past alive,
the
present dead,
are
stored within it, waiting your command that they be brought to you,
and lived again. And thus do their effects appear to be increased
by time, which took away their cause.
Yet
time is but another phase of what does nothing. It works hand in
hand with all the other attributes with which you seek to keep concealed
the truth about yourself.
Time
neither takes away nor can restore. And yet you make strange use
of it, as if the past had caused the present, which is but a consequence
in which no change can be made possible, because its cause has gone.
Yet
change must have a cause that will endure, or else it will not last.
No change can be made in the present, if its cause is past. Only
the past is held in memory as you make use of it, and so it is a
way to hold the past against the now.
Remember
nothing that you taught yourself, for you were badly taught. And
who would keep a senseless lesson in his mind, when he can learn
and can preserve a better one?
When
ancient memories of hate appear, remember that their cause is gone.
And so you cannot understand what they are for. Let not the cause
that you would give them now be what it was which made them what
they were, or seemed to be. Be
glad that it is gone, for this is what you would be pardoned from.
And see, instead, the new effects of cause accepted NOW, with consequences
HERE. They will surprise you with their loveliness. The ancient
new ideas they bring will be the happy consequences of a Cause so
ancient that it far exceeds the span of memory which your perception
sees.
This
is the Cause the Holy Spirit has remembered for you, when you would
forget. It is not past because He let It not be unremembered. It
has never changed because there never was a time in which He did
not keep It safely in your mind. Its
consequences will indeed seem new, because you thought that you
remembered not their Cause. Yet was It never absent from your mind,
for it was not your Father’s Will that He be unremembered
by His Son.
What
you remember never was. It
came from causelessness which you confused with Cause. It can deserve
but laughter, when you learn you have remembered consequences which
were causeless, and could never be effects.
The
miracle reminds you of a Cause forever present, perfectly untouched
by time and interference. Never changed from what It IS. And you
are its effects, as changeless and as perfect as Itself.
Its
memory does not lie in the past, nor waits the future. It is not
revealed in miracles. They but remind you that It has not gone.
When you forgive It for your sins, It will no longer be denied.
You
who have sought to lay a judgment of your own Creator cannot understand
it is not He Who laid a judgment on His Son.
You
would deny Him His effects, yet have they never been denied. There
was no time in which His Son could be condemned for what was causeless,
and against His Will. What your remembering would witness to is
but the fear of God. He has not done the thing you fear. No more
have you. And so your innocence has not been lost.
You
need no healing to be healed. In quietness, see in the miracle a
lesson in allowing Cause to have Its own effects, and doing nothing
that would interfere.
The
miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant, and is
still. It
reaches gently from that quiet time, and from the mind it healed
in quiet then, to other minds to share its quietness. And they will
join in doing nothing to prevent its radiant extension back into
the Mind Which caused all minds to be.
Born
out of sharing, there can be no pause in time to cause the miracle
delay in hastening to all unquiet minds, and bringing them an instant’s
stillness, when the memory of God returns to them. Their own remembering
is quiet now, and what has come to take its place will not be wholly
unremembered afterwards.
He to
Whom time is given offers thanks for every quiet instant given Him.
For in that instant is His memory allowed to offer all its treasures
to the Son of God, for whom they have been kept. How gladly does
He offer them unto the one for whom He has been given them! And
His Creator shares His thanks, because He would not be deprived
of His effects.
The instant’s
silence that His Son accepts gives welcome to eternity and Him,
and lets Them enter where They would abide. For in that instant
does the Son of God do nothing that would make himself afraid.
How instantly
the memory of God arises in the mind that has no fear to keep the
memory away.
Its own remembering
has gone. There is no past to keep its fearful image in the way
of glad awakening to present peace.
The trumpets
of eternity resound throughout the stillness, yet disturb it not.
And what is now remembered is not fear, but, rather, is the Cause
that fear was made to render unremembered and undone. The stillness
speaks in gentle sounds of love the Son of God remembers from before
his own remembering came in between the present and the past, to
shut them out.
Now is the
Son of God at last aware of Present Cause and Its benign effects.
Now does he
understand what he has made is causeless, making no effects at
all. He has
done nothing. And in seeing this, he understands he never had
a need for doing anything, and never did.
His Cause
is Its effects. There never was a cause beside It that could generate
a different past or future. Its effects are changelessly eternal,
beyond fear, and past the world of sin entirely.
What has been
lost, to see the causeless not? And
where is sacrifice, when memory of God has come to take the place
of loss?
What better
way to close the little gap between illusions and reality than to
allow the memory of God to flow across it, making it a bridge an
instant will suffice to reach beyond?
For God has
closed it with Himself. His memory has not gone by, and left a stranded
Son forever on a shore where he can glimpse another shore which
he can never reach. His
Father wills that he be lifted up, and gently carried over. He has
built the bridge, and it is He Who will transport His Son across
it. Have no fear that He will fail in what He wills. Nor that you
be excluded from the Will that is for you.
