1. Prepare you now for the undoing of what never was. 2If you already understood the difference between truth and illusion, the Atonement would have no meaning. 3The holy instant, the holy relationship, the Holy Spirit’s teaching, and all the means by which salvation is accomplished, would have no purpose. 4For they are all but aspects of the plan to change your dreams of fear to happy dreams, from which you waken easily to knowledge. 5Put yourself not in charge of this, for you cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. 6Some of your greatest advances you have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats you have evaluated as success.
2. Never approach the holy instant after you have tried to remove all fear and hatred from your mind. 2That is its function. 3Never attempt to overlook your guilt before you ask the Holy Spirit’s help. 4That is His function. 5Your part is only to offer Him a little willingness to let Him remove all fear and hatred, and to be forgiven. 6On your little faith, joined with His understanding, He will build your part in the Atonement and make sure that you fulfill it easily. 7And with Him, you will build a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith, and rising even to Heaven. 8Nor will you use it to ascend to Heaven alone.
3. Through your holy relationship, reborn and blessed in every holy instant you do not arrange, thousands will rise to Heaven with you. 2Can you plan for this? 3Or could you prepare yourself for such a function? 4Yet it is possible, because God wills it. 5Nor will He change His Mind about it. 6The means and purpose both belong to Him. 7You have accepted one; the other will be provided. 8A purpose such as this, without the means, is inconceivable. 9He will provide the means to anyone who shares His purpose.
4. Happy dreams come true, not because they are dreams, but only because they are happy. 2And so they must be loving. 3Their message is, “Thy Will be done,” and not, “I want it otherwise.” 4The alignment of means and purpose is an undertaking impossible for you to understand. 5You do not even realize you have accepted the Holy Spirit’s purpose as your own, and you would merely bring unholy means to its accomplishment. 6The little faith it needed to change the purpose is all that is required to receive the means and use them.
5. It is no dream to love your brother as yourself. 2Nor is your holy relationship a dream. 3All that remains of dreams within it is that it is still a special relationship. 4Yet it is very useful to the Holy Spirit, Who has a special function here. 5It will become the happy dream through which He can spread joy to thousands on thousands who believe that love is fear, not happiness. 6Let Him fulfill the function that He gave to your relationship by accepting it for you, and nothing will be wanting that would make of it what He would have it be.
6. When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by anything, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness, in spite of fear, to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one that you would rather have. 2He will never fail in this. 3But forget not that your relationship is one, and so it must be that whatever threatens the peace of one is an equal threat to the other. 4The power of joining its blessing lies in the fact that it is now impossible for you or your brother to experience fear alone, or to attempt to deal with it alone. 5Never believe that this is necessary, or even possible. 6Yet just as this is impossible, so is it equally impossible that the holy instant come to either of you without the other. 7And it will come to both at the request of either.
7. Whoever is saner at the time the threat is perceived should remember how deep is his indebtedness to the other and how much gratitude is due him, and be glad that he can pay his debt by bringing happiness to both. 2Let him remember this, and say:
3I desire this holy instant for myself, that I may share it with my brother, whom I love.
4It is not possible that I can have it without him, or he without me.
5Yet it is wholly possible for us to share it now.
6And so I choose this instant as the one to offer to the Holy Spirit, that His blessing may descend on us, and keep us both in peace.