Most of the older spiritual traditions I found wanting because I always felt a victim to time: under the misapprehension that time was moving along in a sequential linear manner at the same rate. My last Master, for instance, said I would have to incarnate 108 times before I awakened and I knew this not to be the whole comprehensive picture. The Course is an upgrade in Truth, not because Truth has altered but because the mind has matured sufficiently to receive these new broader ideas about time. The very first thing that Jesus brought through Helen, the scribe of the Course, was that “It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time.” He immediately establishes that time is flexible and you are in choice.
Time has a beginning and an end. The entry point, or as my Master calls it ‘the birthplace of dreams’, is also the very same exit portal. ‘I am the Alpha & Omega’ from the Bible points to this. Dreaming ends where it began. Another way to teach this is that when Jesus resurrected, so did you. His awakening is your awakening: there is only one mind awakening. The departure point of Jesus from this world is also your departure point. In Biblical terms, Jesus says that “No man cometh unto the Father but by me”. He explains in the Course that this “does not mean that I am in any way separate or different from you except in time, and time does not really exist. The statement is more meaningful in terms of a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. You stand below me and I stand below God. In the process of “rising up,” I am higher because, without me, the distance between God and man would be too great for you to encompass.” You could think of this ascension in terms of the Eastern idea of ‘lineage’. Your elder brothers are essentially your bridges to higher frequencies of light.
“The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively. It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning.” You could say that all time is going on all the time and that the “atonement works all the time and in all the dimensions of time.”
“Time and eternity are both in your mind, and will conflict until you perceive time solely as a means to regain eternity…you must learn that time is solely at your disposal, and that nothing in the world can take this responsibility from you.” The whole Course was brought into being as a method of collapsing time to bring the whole Sonship into the Great Awakening more rapidly. He uses the idea of the miracle that is accessible in the ‘holy instant’ within your holy relationship with your brother – it is available now, not in some future scenario. He calls this the ‘immediacy of salvation’. Your brother is literally your way out of here.
“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 future. Release is given you the 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 learned in time, but it does aim at saving time.” This is where Jesus talks about this mode of Awakening of ‘A Course In Miracles’ as opposed to other modalities and traditions. “You may be attempting to follow a very long road to the goal you have accepted. All attempts will ultimately succeed because of their purpose. Yet the means are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them look to the future for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy. Your way will be different, not in purpose but in means. A holy relationship is a means of saving time. One instant spent together with your brother restores the universe to both of you. Here is the ultimate release which everyone will one day find in his own way, at his own time. You do not need this time. Time has been saved for you because you and your brother are together. This is the special means this course is using to save you time. You are not making use of the course if you insist on using means which have served others well, neglecting what was made for you. Save time for me by only this one preparation, and practice doing nothing else. “I need do nothing” is a statement of allegiance, a truly undivided loyalty. Believe it for just one instant, and you will accomplish more than is given to a century of contemplation, or of struggle against temptation.”
Forgiveness of your brother is the essence of The Course in preparing your mind for what lies beyond. “Your brothers are everywhere. You do not have to seek far for salvation. Every minute and every second gives you a chance to save yourself. Do not lose these chances, not because they will not return, but because delay of joy is needless. God wills you perfect happiness now.”
This is the crux on which the Course is based. Jesus says that “the miracle is the only device at your immediate disposal for controlling time” and “is a learning device that lessens the need for time. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not under the usual laws of time.”
Time is not sequential. You can think of it as fragments of memory stacked on top of one another. Each fragment is discrete from the previous one. Each cycle into time returns back to the apex and then we enter a brand new sequence. Evolution occurs in sudden quantum shifts. You flash out and then back in again and it has all changed. (Incidentally, this is why Darwin’s evolution is in error). This is how the ascension occurs: Jacob’s Ladder. (the ladder to heaven described in the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament). As each memory fragment is resolved back to love, the bottom is raised and the bottom eventually becomes the top and there is no more time remaining to descend into.
Also, time is not moving along at the same pace – the nearer the apex you get the faster it goes. If you think of time as a spiral widening down from the top deeper into time, the closer you get to the top, the narrower or quicker are the revolutions (and the deeper you descend the slower are the rotations). An awakening mind is in a vast speed up compared to the slowness of a human identity. My personal experience is that I am literally moving through ‘four seasons in one day’ – perhaps decades and hundreds of years can flash by in an instant. Jesus says, “there is no link of memory to the past.” He adds: “If you would have it there, then there it is. But only your desire made the link”. In other words you keep artificially joining up or sequencing these memory fragments into an illusory horizontal timeline which has no basis in reality.
He explains in more detail the mechanics of the miracle: “in the longitudinal or horizontal plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception. This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary. There is no relationship between the time a miracle takes and the time it covers. The miracle substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does so by the underlying recognition of perfect equality of giver and receiver on which the miracle rests. The miracle shortens time by collapsing it, thus eliminating certain intervals within it. It does this, however, within the larger temporal sequence.”
Essentially, the “course is not beyond immediate learning”. In other words it doesn’t take time. “The holy instant is this instant and every instant. The one you want it to be it is. The one you would not have it be is lost to you. You must decide when it is. Delay it not. For beyond the past and future, where you will not find it, it stands in shimmering readiness for your acceptance.” In other words, you are in acceptance or denial of the holy instant, and therefore you are deciding each moment whether to delay or speed up your timeline. Each moment of recognition of your brother’s holiness & innocence moves you along, and each grievance and projection of wrongs keeps you & your brother imprisoned here.
Today’s’ lesson says “Your passage through time and space is not at random. You cannot but be in the right place at the right time.” But it is important to recognise that where you find yourself is where you choose to be. Essentially, you can press play, pause or fast-forward (or even rewind!). “The instant in which (the) magnitude (of your reality) dawns upon you is but as far away as your desire for it. As long as you desire it not and cherish (the) littleness (of the ego) instead, by so much is it far from you. By so much as you want it, will you bring it nearer.”
“The basic decision of the miracle-minded is not to wait on time any longer than is necessary. Time can waste as well as be wasted. The miracle worker, therefore, accepts the time-control factor gladly. He recognizes that every collapse of time brings everyone closer to the ultimate release from time, in which the Son and the Father are one.” (Interestingly he adds that ‘Equality does not imply equality now’ – we are only equal in eternity, NOT in time.) “The eagerness of the Holy Spirit to give you this is so intense He would not wait, although He waits in patience. Meet His patience with your impatience at delay in meeting Him.”
The world is the result of the illusory idea that there is a will apart or separate from God and as such, being here is a denial of God. Yet, since this is an impossible idea, the paradox is that this world is not real. It has no causation. This never occurred. It is a mistake, a glitch, an anomaly, a kink in the matrix that has already been resolved in the resurrection of Jesus. This is already over. Salvation is accomplished. Your human mind cannot really grasp this. “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. When experience will come to end your doubting has been set. For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by.” So “delay is of the ego, because time is its concept. Both time and delay are meaningless in eternity.”
In an absolute way, the whole world, the excursion into time & space, is one giant delay, avoidance in being where you truly abide. Jesus talks about it in this manner: “God in His knowledge is not waiting, but His Kingdom is bereft while you wait. All the Sons of God are waiting for your return, just as you are waiting for theirs. Delay does not matter in eternity, but it is tragic in time. You have elected to be in time rather than eternity, and therefore believe you are in time. Yet your election is both free and alterable. You do not belong in time. Your place is only in eternity, where God Himself placed you forever.”
But Jesus is not asking you to deny the world, but rather to take responsibility for it. If you see a world then YOU are responsible for it and consequently correction is necessary in your mind. “To remember is merely to restore to your mind what is already there. You do not make what you remember; you merely accept again what is already there, but was rejected.” He adds, “What you believe is true for you. In this sense the separation has occurred, and to deny it is merely to use denial inappropriately. However, to concentrate on error is only a further error. The initial corrective procedure is to recognize temporarily that there is a problem, but only as an indication that immediate correction is needed. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay. It should be emphasized, however, that ultimately no compromise is possible between everything and nothing. Time is essentially a device by which all compromise in this respect can be given up. It only seems to be abolished by degrees, because time itself involves intervals that do not exist.”
Let the beauty of Jesus’ poetic prose wash over you as he speedily draws you down the rabbit hole and brings you up to the precipice of your exit from this world: “Each day, and every minute in each day, and every instant that each minute holds, you but relive the single instant when the time of terror took the place of love. And so you die each day to live again, until you cross the gap between the past and present, which is not a gap at all. Such is each life; a seeming interval from birth to death and on to life again, a repetition of an instant gone by long ago that cannot be relived. And all of time is but the mad belief that what is over is still here and now.
“Forgive the past and let it go, for it is gone. You stand no longer on the ground that lies between the worlds. You have gone on, and reached the world that lies at Heaven’s gate. There is no hindrance to the Will of God, nor any need that you repeat again a journey that was over long ago. Look gently on your brother, and behold the world in which perception of your hate has been transformed into a world of love.”
Spiritual Enlightenment through A Course In Miracles 