The Holy Instant - 3
by Allen Watson
IV. Entering the Holy Instant
In the last session Robert began discussing the conditions for entering the holy instant. He covered
- relinquishing current beliefs and wanting it
- Forgetting the past and future, or focusing on the present
- Giving the holy instant of release to your brothers, or in other words, forgiveness.
I'm going to continue now with three more points:
- Letting go of the search for littleness & desiring magnitude
- Letting go private thoughts & desiring communication
- Letting go focus on bodies and belief the body can contain you
4. Letting Go of the Search for Littleness
For this theme we are going to be looking mainly at Chapter 15, Section III, "Littleness versus Magnitude," which is page 285/306, and the first part of Section IV, "Practicing the Holy Instant". As we will see as we go though the opening paragraphs, "littleness" refers to the separated self we have made for ourselves, and everything associated with it. "Littleness" is trying to make the ego identity enough to satisfy ourselves. "Magnitude" represents our true Self, or Christ, and our function to extend the Will of God, and everything associated with that. "Littleness" is who you think you are and the self you are trying to protect; "magnitude" is who you really are, which needs no protection.
In Section IV, which talks about "The Practice of the holy instant," the second paragraph states plainly: "Your practice must therefore rest upon your willingness to let all littleness go" (IV.2:1). So the holy instant is very much connected to this contrast between littleness and magnitude. We need to read Section III, however, to have a better understanding of what it means to let go of littleness.
Read paragraph 1.
We need to understand what littleness is and why it can never content us. The sentence that best helps us understand, in a practical sense, is sentence 6:
When you strive for anything in this world in the belief that it will bring you peace, you are belittling yourself and blinding yourself to glory.
Littleness is thinking that something in this world will bring us peace; that something in this world will satisfy us or content us. When we choose to go after something in this world, believing it will bring us peace or happiness, we are expressing a certain evaluation of ourselves.
Read 2:1-6.
The fourth sentence is worthy of note in relation to the holy instant, because it states one of the conditions of the holy instant, although it does not mention the term:
It is essential that you accept the fact, and accept it gladly, that there is no form of littleness that can ever content you.
As Workbook lesson 128 puts it:
Nothing is here to cherish. Nothing here is worth one instant of delay and pain; one moment of uncertainty and doubt. The worthless offer nothing... Today we practice letting go all thought of values we have given to the world. We leave it free of purposes we gave its aspects and its phases and its dreams. We hold it purposeless within our minds, and loosen it from all we wish it were. (W-pI.128.4:2-5:3).
The lesson hints at the holy instant when it says,
Pause and be still a while [that phrase, "be still," is always an invitation to have a holy instant], and see how far you rise above the world, when you release your mind from chains and let it seek the level where it finds itself at home. It will be grateful to be free a while. It knows where it belongs (W-pI.128.6:1-3).
Coming back to Chapter 15, Section III, the third paragraph expands on the idea that has just been stated: every choice we make is our evaluation of ourselves. It says,
You who have sought and found littleness, remember this: Every decision you make stems from what you think you are, and represents the value that you have put upon yourself (3:3).
It goes on to say that if we think "the little" can content us, if we seek something in this world believing it will bring us peace, we are limiting ourselves. We are choosing littleness. And then it adds: "Your function is not little, and it is only by finding your function and fulfilling it that you can escape from littleness" (3:5).
The next paragraph goes on to discuss what that function is. Jesus says we don't have to strive for it because we already have it.
All your striving must be directed against littleness, for it does require vigilance to protect your magnitude in this world. To hold your magnitude in perfect awareness in a world of littleness is a task the little cannot undertake. Yet it is asked of you, in tribute to your magnitude and not your littleness (4:4-6).
This is leading up to the section on practicing the holy instant. Practicing the holy instant is how we exercise vigilance against littleness. Notice what is being asked of us: We are being asked to hold our magnitude in perfect awareness in a world of littleness. That is no small task, no small function. But that is what is asked of us. In the holy instant, we experience our magnitude and let go of our littleness; we remember who we are and forget the ego's message about what we are. Practicing the holy instant, more and more, until we learn to hold our magnitude in perfect awareness, is the path to which we have been called.
Skip to paragraph 6:
The Holy Spirit can hold your magnitude, clean of all littleness, clearly and in perfect safety in your mind, untouched by every little gift the world of littleness would offer you. But for this, you cannot side against Him in what He wills for you. Decide for God through Him. For littleness, and the belief that you can be content with littleness, are decisions you make about yourself. (6:1-4)
It is possible, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to hold our magnitude in perfect awareness in our minds. The condition of doing so, however, is that we don't fight against it. If we hold on to littleness we are fighting against our magnitude. (I realize it still is not clear exactly what "magnitude" means; it's coming, don't worry.) The next sentence gives a very clear picture of what it means to hold on to littleness:
The power and the glory that lie in you from God are for all who, like you, [here comes the description of people who are holding on to littleness] perceive themselves as little, and believe that littleness can be blown up into a sense of magnitude that can content them. (6:5)
We believe in the littleness and then try to puff it up, like a blow-fish, to give ourselves the appearance of magnitude. The same thought comes through in the section titled "Grandeur versus Grandiosity" in Chapter 9, where it says:
Self-inflation is the only offering it [the ego] can make. The grandiosity of the ego is its alternative to the grandeur of God....Grandiosity is always a cover for despair. It is without hope because it is not real. It is an attempt to counteract your littleness, based on the belief that the littleness is real (T-9.VIII.1:5-2:3).
What, then, is magnitude? Paragraph 7 gives a pretty good idea.
Read paragraph 7.
God wants to give Himself through you. That is your magnitude. He wants to reach out "from you to everyone and beyond everyone to His Son's creations." He wants to extend forever through you.
The greatness that is in you is love.
You know not what love means because you have sought to purchase it with little gifts, thus valuing it too little to understand its magnitude. Love is not little and love dwells in you, for you are host to Him [God]. Before the greatness that lives in you [God and His love, which wants to extend forever], your poor appreciation of yourself and all the little offerings you give slip into nothingness (8:5-7).
This is our greatness; this is our grandeur; this is our magnitude. We are extensions of the love of God. We are host to God; He lives in us and wants to reach through us to the world. That is our function, and fulfilling it is our glory. Compared to that all the puffed-up glory of the world is nothing. And it is this magnitude, this function, this love, that we connect with in the holy instant.
Jump now to Section IV. The first paragraph tells us that the holy instant is "this instant and every instant. The want you want it to be it is. The one you would not have it be is lost to you" (1:3-5). What would make us choose not to have it? And the answer is: Holding on to our littleness, or to our plans to puff up our littleness into something that seems impressive.
You cannot bring it [the holy instant] into glad awareness while you do not want it, for it holds the whole release from littleness (1:9).
If we are holding on to our littleness, and the holy instant is going to release us from littleness, we won't want the holy instant. And that is exactly why we don't have it.
Your practice must therefore rest upon your willingness to let all littleness go. The instant in which magnitude dawns upon you is but as far away as your desire for it. As long as you desire it not and cherish littleness instead, by so much is it far from you. By so much as you want it will you bring it nearer. Think not that you can find salvation in your own way and have it. Give over every plan you have made for your salvation in exchange for God's. His will content you, and nothing else can bring you peace. For peace is of God, and no one beside Him. (T-15.IV.2)
Remember that holding on to littleness means any goal we pursue in the world that we believe will bring us peace. In other words, any plan we have for finding "salvation" on our own. Basically, letting go of littleness means letting go of all our plans. All of them. Letting them go and receiving the plans of the Holy Spirit for fulfilling our function. Because fulfilling our function, entering in to the magnitude of being God's extension in this world, releasing every mind around us to their own magnitude, is the only thing that will ever bring us happiness and peace.
I call you to fulfill your holy part in the plan that He has given to the world for its release from littleness (IV.3:4). Call forth in everyone only the remembrance of God, and of the Heaven that is in him. For where you would have your brother be, there will you think you are (III.12:1, 2). Join with me in His [plan], that we may release all those who would be bound, proclaiming together that the Son of God is host to Him. Thus will we let no one forget what you would remember. And thus will you remember it (III.11:3-5).
If you want to live in the holy instant you have to let go of littleness, and that means letting go of your plans and letting the Holy Spirit make all your decisions for you. It means giving up on trying to find peace in your own way and accepting the only peace there is, the peace God offers you in finding your function in Him and fulfilling it.
That's what you need to do to live in the holy instant. But the thing is, we can practice doing this. We can make little trial runs. We can, in a way, experiment: What would it be like to do this? What would it feel like? Let me, just for now, for a minute, try letting go of my plans. Let me imagine how it would feel to have no plans of my own and to trust in God's plans. Let me just for a moment allow myself to be the love God says I am, and to accept extending love as my only function. How does that feel?
In practicing you don't worry about what happens ten minutes from now or tomorrow. You don't change your life all at once. You try on the new state of mind for size. See how it feels. Let yourself experience it. If you do, I can guarantee that you will like it. Being the loving Son of God and extending love feels good. And before long the contrast between how you feel in the holy instant and how you feel the rest of the time will begin to convince you that you want to feel this way all of the time. That's how the transformation happens.
Read paragraph 4:4 to paragraph 5.
5. Letting Go of Private Thoughts
The next condition of entering the holy instant is letting go of private thoughts. We've seen earlier that in the holy instant you experience perfect communication with all minds and with God. It's obvious, then, that if you don't want perfect communication you will hold back from entering the holy instant. And if you have thoughts that you want to keep private—well, the conclusion is unmistakable. Holding on to private thoughts will keep you out of the holy instant.
You can almost say this is common sense. I mean, you aren't going to experience many blissful moments of total communication with someone if you are hiding your thoughts from them—right?
We can continue our reading right in the same section, 15.IV, starting where we left off, with paragraph 6.
Read paragraph to 7:2.
To want the holy instant, you have to want "the perfect communication that makes the holy instant what it is." You have to be willing for your mind to be open, both to receive and to give. You must be in a place where you are willing to "seek to change nothing, but merely to accept everything."
I love reading science fiction. I've read a dozen novels at least about telepathy, and what it would be like for a group of people to know, effortlessly, what everyone around them was thinking, and what it would be like to know that you had no private thoughts. Some authors theorize that it would drive you nearly insane. Others theorize that if private thoughts were impossible, minds would very quickly be healed. If you thought an unloving thought you would immediately experience the pain that thought caused in the mind of the person you were thinking about. I tend to be of the latter school; I think a lack of private thoughts would be very healing.
I think that is pretty much the position of A Course in Miracles as well. It teaches us, right here, that "all minds are in communication." It says that perfect communication is what makes the holy instant holy. In other words, private thoughts are an illusion. Listen to Lesson 19 in the Workbook:
Today we are again emphasizing the fact that minds are joined. This is rarely a wholly welcome idea at first, since it seems to carry with it an enormous sense of responsibility, and may even be regarded as an "invasion of privacy." Yet it is a fact that there are no private thoughts (W-pI.19.2:1-3).
So the Course is not asking us not to have private thoughts. Rather it is asking us to realize that we do not have private thoughts. Minds are joined, and my thoughts affect everyone, even the ones I think are private. They aren't private; that's the point. There is no such thing as private thoughts.
If we object and think that the only thoughts we are aware of are private thoughts, that all the thinking in our minds, so far as we know, goes on in separation from every other mind, the Course turns the argument around on us to demonstrate that what we think of as our thoughts do not even really exist!
I have no private thoughts. Yet it is only private thoughts of which I am aware. What can these thoughts mean? They do not exist, and so they mean nothing. Yet my mind is part of creation and part of its Creator. Would I not rather join the thinking of the universe than to obscure all that is really mine with my pitiful and meaningless "private" thoughts? (W-pI.rI.52.5:2-5).
In the holy instant, we "join the thinking of the universe." In order for that to happen we must, if only for a moment, be willing to give up the illusion of having private thoughts, and the desire to have them.
Read 15.IV.7:3 to 8:6.
"Am I willing to let everything go that interferes with perfect communication? Does breaking communication still hold value? Are there thoughts I want to keep hidden?" Those are the questions, and if any answer is one that chooses against perfect communication, even the readiness of the Holy Spirit is not enough to make the holy instant yours. (8:4).
Jesus goes on to say that our thoughts don't have to be completely pure; we just have to be willing not to keep the impure thoughts, that is, willing to let the impure thoughts be exposed and to let go of them. We have to be willing for the Holy Spirit to shine them away. If we protect them and try to hide them, He can't help us. He says, "Try only to be vigilant against deception" (9:7). Don't try to fool Him; don't try to fool yourself. That's all that is asked in our practice. We'll come back to this point tomorrow morning.
6. Letting Go of the Focus on Bodies
In the holy instant, where the Great Rays replace the body in awareness, the recognition of relationships without limits is given you. But in order to see this, it is necessary to give up every use the ego has for the body, and to accept the fact that the ego has no purpose you would share with it (T-15.IX.3:1, 2).
In order to recognize relationships without limits, which is what happens within the holy instant, we have to give up "every use the ego has for the body." That is pretty clear. The same principle applies as with littleness and with private thoughts: If the holy instant consists in relationships without limits, then in order to experience it we have to let go of limits. And the body is a limit on love, so we have to let the body go. Unless we are willing to leave behind the limits, which means the body, we can't experience relationships without limits.
Read IX.3:3.
The ego made the body for its purposes and wants to use the body for its purposes, which are always purposes of separation and fear. If we continue in thinking the body has a purpose, that it serves us for our good in some way, we are still being deceived by the ego into pursuing its goals. The Course teaches that, to the Holy Spirit, the only purpose of the body is for us to communicate with other minds that think they are limited by the body. If we think it has any other purpose, we are setting limits on the holy instant.
When the body ceases to attract you, and when you place no value on it as a means of getting anything, then there will be no interference in communication and your thoughts will be as free as God's. As you let the Holy Spirit teach you how to use the body only for purposes of communication, and renounce its use for separation and attack which the ego sees in it, you will learn you have no need of a body at all. In the holy instant there are no bodies, and you experience only the attraction of God (T-15.IX.7:1-3).
What the Course is talking about is not a negation of the body, not a hatred of the body or a mistreatment of it. It is talking about giving up the ego's use of the body for separation and attack. We all know that being attracted to someone simply because of their body is selfish, small-minded and indicative of a terrible short-sightedness. Yet we still find ourselves giving in to it, don't we? That kind of short-sightedness will keep you from experiencing the holy instant.
Likewise, valuing your own body as a means of getting something is equally short-sighted. Bodies as such are limits on love and interfere with communication. If we want Him to, the Holy Spirit will teach us how to use the body only for communication; that is the renunciation of the body that is being called for. Not the body itself but the ego's use of it.
What does it mean to use the body for communication? It can be as simple as taking someone else's hand:
You can stretch out your hand and reach to Heaven. You whose hand is joined with your brother's have begun to reach beyond the body, but not outside yourself, to reach your shared Identity together (T-18.VI.10:1-2).
The Course wants us to see the body as a means, not an end; a means of joining minds, and not an end in itself. To see the body as a means means that we utilize the body to achieve something else—union of minds. To see the body as the end means that our goals involve the body itself—keeping it safe, pleasuring it, and so on.
Read 18.VII, paragraph 1 and 2.
The feeling I get from these paragraphs is that in the holy instant, for just a moment, we literally lose awareness of the body. I repeat that we are not attacking the body, saying it is evil, or abusing it in any way. We are just ignoring it. And to enter the holy instant we have to be willing for that to happen. We have to be willing for the awareness of the body to just fade out; for the body to become unimportant to us.
Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself (W-pI.199.1:1).
That is the opening line of Workbook Lesson 199, "I am not a body. I am free." This is one of a set of twenty lessons, from 181 through 200, that emphasize practicing the holy instant.
The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it and sheltered by its presence (1:4).
Letting go of our focus on the body also includes beginning to realize that the body is not you; you are a mind, and your mind is not in a body, firmly tied to it and sheltered by it. Instead, your mind is "unlimited forever...beyond the laws of time and space." It is the ego that is tied to the body—not you.
The body disappears [when you declare your innocence], because you have no need of it except the need the Holy Spirit sees. For this [for His purposes] the body will appear as useful form for what the mind must do. It thus becomes a vehicle which helps forgiveness be extended to the all-inclusive goal that it must reach, according to God's plan (W-pI.199.4:3-5).
Jesus clearly does not mean that the body literally disappears. In one sentence he uses the word "disappears" and in the next he says "the body will appear." Again, it means that the ego's use of the body is given up, and the body is given to the Holy Spirit as a vehicle for the extension of forgiveness. To experience the holy instant we must be willing for that to happen.
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