1. The Atonement is in time, but not for time. ²Being in you, it is eternal. ³What holds remembrance of God cannot be bound by time. ⁴No more are you. ⁵For unless God is bound, you cannot be. ⁶An instant offered to the Holy Spirit is offered to God on your behalf, and in that instant you will awaken gently in Him. ⁷In the blessed instant you will let go all your past learning, and the Holy Spirit will quickly offer you the whole lesson of peace. ⁸What can take time, when all the obstacles to learning it have been removed? ⁹Truth is so far beyond time that all of it happens at once. ¹⁰For as it was created one, so its oneness depends not on time at all.

2. Do not be concerned with time, and fear not the instant of holiness that will remove all fear. ²For the instant of peace is eternal because it is without fear. ³It will come, being the lesson God gives you, through the Teacher He has appointed to translate time into eternity. ⁴Blessed is God’s Teacher, Whose joy it is to teach God’s holy Son his holiness. ⁵His joy is not contained in time. ⁶His teaching is for you because His joy is yours. ⁷Through Him you stand before God’s altar, where He gently translates hell into Heaven. ⁸For it is only in Heaven that God would have you be.

3. How long can it take to be where God would have you? ²For you are where you have forever been and will forever be. ³All that you have, you have forever. ⁴The blessed instant reaches out to encompass time, as God extends Himself to encompass you. ⁵You who have spent days, hours and even years in chaining your brothers to your ego in an attempt to support it and uphold its weakness, do not perceive the Source of strength. ⁶In this holy instant you will unchain all your brothers, and refuse to support either their weakness or your own.

4. You do not realize how much you have misused your brothers by seeing them as sources of ego support. ²As a result, they witness to the ego in your perception, and seem to provide reasons for not letting it go. ³Yet they are far stronger and much more compelling witnesses for the Holy Spirit. ⁴And they support His strength. ⁵It is, therefore, your choice whether they support the ego or the Holy Spirit in you. ⁶And you will recognize which you have chosen by their reactions. ⁷A Son of God who has been released through the Holy Spirit in a brother is always recognized. ⁸He cannot be denied. ⁹If you remain uncertain, it is only because you have not given complete release. ¹⁰And because of this, you have not given a single instant completely to the Holy Spirit. ¹¹For when you have, you will be sure you have. ¹²You will be sure because the witness to Him will speak so clearly of Him that you will hear and understand. ¹³You will doubt until you hear one witness whom you have wholly released through the Holy Spirit. ¹⁴And then you will doubt no more.

5. The holy instant has not yet happened to you. ²Yet it will, and you will recognize it with perfect certainty. ³No gift of God is recognized in any other way. ⁴You can practice the mechanics of the holy instant, and will learn much from doing so. ⁵Yet its shining and glittering brilliance, which will literally blind you to this world by its own vision, you cannot supply. ⁶And here it is, all in this instant, complete, accomplished and given wholly.

6. Start now to practice your little part in separating out the holy instant. ²You will receive very specific instructions as you go along. ³To learn to separate out this single second, and to experience it as timeless, is to begin to experience yourself as not separate. ⁴Fear not that you will not be given help in this. ⁵God’s Teacher and His lesson will support your strength. ⁶It is only your weakness that will depart from you in this practice, for it is the practice of the power of God in you. ⁷Use it but for one instant, and you will never deny it again. ⁸Who can deny the Presence of what the universe bows to, in appreciation and gladness? ⁹Before the recognition of the universe that witnesses to It, your doubts must disappear.