Time – the infinitesimally small gap between the Eternity before the dream of separation and the Eternity after it has been healed, a gap in which we still appear to be stuck – was made by the separated ones as a result of exchanging perception in place of Knowledge, because perception involves or takes time. Time doesn’t exist in truth because it ended the instant it began, as if it had never occurred. What we experience since then as time is a single instant looping like a tape over and over again until we get free of this loop and go beyond it into the Timeless again, from which, seeing what we thought time was, we see that it was nothing.
“Time only seems to go in one direction. We undertake a journey that is over. Yet it seems to have a future still unknown to us. Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a Plan behind appearances that does not change. The Script is written. The time that experience will come to end your doubting has been set. For we just perceive the journey from the point at which it ended, perceiving it from there as it extends back in time, imagining that we make it once again, reviewing mentally what has gone by.”
“Time lasted only an instant in your mind, with no effect upon Eternity. And so has all time passed, and everything is exactly as it was before the way to nothingness was made. The tiny tick of time, in which the first mistake was made, and all of them within that one mistake, held also the Correction for that one, and all of them that came within the first. And in that tiny instant time was gone, for that was all it ever was. What the Divine gave Answer to is answered, and is gone.
“To you who still believe you live in time, and know not that it is gone, the Holy Spirit still guides you through the infinitely small and senseless maze you still perceive in time, though it has long since gone. You think you live in what is past. Each thing you look upon you perceived only for an instant, long ago, before its unreality gave way to Truth. Not one illusion still remains unanswered in your mind. Uncertainty was brought to Certainty so long ago that it is hard indeed to hold it to your heart, as if it were before you still. The tiny instant you would keep, and make eternal, passed away in Heaven too soon for anything to notice it had come.”
Time thus has a paradoxical place in the current situation of the world. It wastes things away when it is wasted by those deciding to stay stuck in it. Yet it is a gift when used as directed by Spirit, Who, the instant time was made, transformed it into a boon for the separated ones, designating it as a tool to give the separated ones time to awaken from their dream.
“Waiting is possible only in time, but time has no meaning. You who made delay can leave time behind simply by recognizing that neither beginnings nor endings were created by the Eternal, Who placed no limits on Its Creation or upon those who create like It.” “The Divine has blessed Its Children forever. If you will bless them in time, you will be in Eternity. Time cannot separate you from the Divine if you use it on behalf of the Eternal.”
Truly understanding what time is enables us to realize that everything that seems to happen in the outer world in the present already happened long ago, has happened many times since then, and seems to be happening for the first time now in order to give us another choice to finally respond to it entirely correctly, which means to awaken from it.
“In order to understand the teaching-learning plan of awakening, it is necessary to grasp the concept of time that this Course sets forth. Atonement corrects illusions, not Truth. Therefore, it corrects what never was. Further, the Plan for this Correction was established and completed simultaneously, for the Will of the Creator is entirely apart from time. So is all Reality, being of the Divine. The instant the idea of separation entered the mind of the Divine’s Children, in that same instant was the Divine’s Answer given. In time this happened very long ago. In Reality it never happened at all.”
“The world of time is the world of illusion. What happened long ago seems to be happening now. Choices made long since appear to be open and yet to be made. What has been learned and understood and long ago passed by is perceived as a new thought, a fresh idea, a different approach. Because your will is free you can accept what has already happened to heal the separation at any time you choose, and only then will you realize that it was always there.”
“Time, then, really goes backward to an instant so ancient that it is beyond all memory, and past even the possibility of remembering. Yet because it is an instant that is relived again and again and still again, it seems to be now. And thus it is that student and teacher [in awakening] seem to come together in the present, finding each other as if they had not met before. The student comes at the right time to the right place. This is inevitable, because they made the right choice in that ancient instant, which they now relive. The teacher, too, made an inevitable choice out of an ancient past. The Creator’s Will in everything only seems to take time in the working out. What could delay the Power of Eternity?”
Regarding the relationship of time and memory, the Course suggests something that at first may seem quite radical: that the natural, or Spirit-given, function of memory is only to remember Eternity, and that our habit of remembering the past is something we taught ourselves, and is a skill that is incredibly unnatural because the past literally doesn’t exist. The implications of this are profound because our normal experience of time and of the world rests fundamentally and securely on the assumption that only the past can be remembered.
“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 that the world imposes on it are only as vast as those you let the world impose on you. There is no inherent link of memory to the past. This link is only there if you would have it there, because 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. It does not seek to use memory as a means to keep the past, but rather as a way to let it go. Memory holds the messages it receives, and does what it is given it to do.”
“To be born anew is to let the past go and perceive the present without condemnation. For the cloud that obscures the Divine’s Children from you is the past, and if you would have it past and gone, then you must not perceive it now. And if you look upon it in the present in your delusions, then it has not gone from you, although it is not there.
“Time can release as well as imprison, depending on whose interpretation of it you use. Past, present and future are not continuous unless you force continuity on them. You can perceive them as continuous, and make them so for yourself. But do not allow yourself to be deceived and believe that this is how time really is, for to believe that Reality is what you would have It be, according to your use for It, is delusional.
“Time’s true continuity is destroyed by breaking it into past, present, and future for your own purposes. You would anticipate the future on the basis of your past experience, and plan for it accordingly. And by so doing, you are aligning past and future, and not allowing miracles, which could intervene between past and future in the present, to free you to be born anew. The miracle enables you to perceive your sisters and brothers without their past, and so see them as also born anew. Their errors are all past, and by perceiving them free of all errors you release them. And since their past is yours, you share in this Release.”
Expanding on this idea of remembering only the Eternal, the Course reminds us that the only place Eternity touches time is now, the present instant. “This instant is the only time there is.” If Eternity can touch time now, this instant, it could also do so previously in the now that was in the past, and indeed all the instants in the past that Eternity has touched in our experience are those instants when loving thoughts were given and received. “To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you. All the rest of the past must be forgotten. Forgiveness is a selective remembering, based not on your selection. . . . The present is forgiveness.”
All the rest of the past other than Eternity’s Presence there meant nothing and still means nothing because it wasn’t and isn’t real. Thus our awakening assignment with regard to time is to switch our memory from focusing on the past, an activity which simply engages our memory in nothingness and keeps it from functioning as it should, and remember only Eternity, or the Presence of the Divine – of Love – in each current moment. This assignment reflects the goal of the Course, which is “. . . to remove the obstructions in the mind, heart and will to the awareness of Love’s Presence.” This Presence is only experienced now; thus It is always here, and always has been and will be.
“Eternity and time are both in your mind, and will conflict until you perceive time solely as a means to regain Eternity. You cannot do this as long as you believe that anything that happens to you is caused by factors outside yourself. You must learn that time is solely at your disposal, and that nothing in the world can take this responsibility from you.”