T. 18. VII. 1 – 4. Jesus: “You still have too much faith in the body as a source of strength! What plans do you make that do not involve its comfort or protection or enjoyment in some way?
This means that, in your interpretation of it, the body is an end in itself, somehow ‘real’ to you, and not just a means of communication. And too, this means that you must still find ‘sin,’ or the effects of separation, attractive to you, for the body is but your attempt to ‘act out’ the separation for yourself.
No one accepts Atonement for himself who still adheres to separation as his goal, for either goal excludes the other. By now having accepted the Holy Spirit’s goal, you have thus not met your one responsibility to it. Atonement is not welcomed by those who, even subconsciously, still seek for pain and destruction!
There is one thing that you probably have never done; you have not utterly forgotten the body, even for a moment. It has perhaps faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet completely disappeared. You are not asked to let this happen for more than an instant, yet it is in this instant that the miracle of Atonement happens. Afterwards you will see the body again, but never quite the same. And every holy instant that you spend without awareness of it gives you a different view of it when you return.
In no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just now! Only its ‘past and future’ make it seem real to you. Time controls the body entirely, for if sin be perceived at all, you cannot be wholly in the present!
In any single instant, the separation that attracts you to guilt would be experienced as pain, and nothing else! You would seek to avoid it. It has no attraction just now, in the present instant! Its whole attraction is thus imaginary, and therefore, must be thought of as in the past or in the future, where imagination reigns!
It is impossible to accept the holy instant without reservation unless, just for an instant, you are willing to see no past or future. You cannot ‘prepare for it’ without placing it in the imagined future! Release is given you in the very instant you desire it. Many have spent a lifetime in ‘preparation,’ and have indeed achieved their instants of success.
This course does not attempt to teach more than they eventually learned in time, but it does aim at saving time.”