T. 18. IV. 5 – 8. Jesus: “With respect to the holy instant, do not attempt to ‘make yourself holy’ to be ready to receive it. That would be but to confuse your role with God’s! Atonement cannot come to those who think that they must first ‘earn it.’ It comes only to those who offer it nothing more than simple willingness to make way for it. Purification is of God alone, and therefore is accomplished for you.
Rather than seek to ‘prepare yourself’ for Him, try to keep in mind: ‘I who am host to God am worthy of Him. He Who established His dwelling place in me created it as He would have it be. It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only that I do not interfere with His plan to restore to me my own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal. I need add nothing to His plan. But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my own in place of it.’
And that is all! Try to add anything, and you will merely be withholding the little that is asked! Remember that you have made guilt yourself, and that your plan for the escape from guilt has been to bring Atonement to it as a sacrifice, an idea that has made salvation fearful to you. So if you do anything to ‘prepare yourself’ for love, it is only fear that you will add! The preparation for the holy instant belongs to Him Who gives it.
Release yourself to Him Whose function is release. Do not try to assume His function for Him. Give Him but what He asks, that you may learn how little is your part, and how great is His. It is this that makes the holy instant so easy and so natural!
You make it difficult only if you insist there must be more you need do. Perhaps you still find it difficult to accept the idea that you need give so little to receive so much. And while you listen to the ego, it is very hard for you to realize that it is not personally insulting for your contribution and the Holy Spirit’s to be so extremely disproportionate. You are still convinced that your understanding is a ‘powerful contribution’ to the truth, and somehow makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized before that you need understand nothing. Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing you cannot give, right now.
Forget not that it has been your decision to make everything that is natural and easy for you impossible. If you believe the holy instant is difficult for you, it is because you have made yourself the arbiter of ‘what is possible,’ and remain unwilling to give place to One Who knows. The whole belief in orders of difficulty in miracles is centered on this.
Everything God wills is not only possible, but has already happened. And that is why the past has gone. It never happened in reality. Only in your mind, which thought it did, is its undoing needful.”