The End of Plans

. . . is the effect of trusting Creation entirely

A couple of years ago I observed that the world was made to make love homeless. In such a world do we feel fear or do we know peace?

One way to answer this question is to ask: am I aware of any needs right now? Have I made plans for meeting those needs in the future? Am I relying on past information and experience to make those plans?

If we answer yes to any of those questions (and really, we all do), then we are in fear and - here is the good news - we are not alone and we are in as far as we can go. There is fear or there is peace. It is not a question of degrees (e.g., T-3.IV.1:5). This is why miracles do not admit to orders of difficulty (T-1.I.1:1) and "all expressions of love are maximal" (T-1.I.1:4).

Peace is the absence of plans (e.g., W-pI.135.11:1) because one's trust in their brother and sister is total and unconditional. When we trust one another completely, then the love of God becomes our sole provision. Who plans when God provides perfectly and totally through Creation? Past and future dissolve in the quiet joy of the Holy Instant in which we see with perfect clarity that judgment is impossible and our joining already accomplished.

What is Heaven but union, direct and perfect, and without the veil of fear upon it? Here are we one, looking with perfect gentleness upon each other and on ourselves. Here all thoughts of any separation between us becomes impossible . . . And here would I unite with you, my friend, my brother and my Self (T-20.III.10:3-5, 7).

If we feel fear, it is because - consciously or otherwise - we have judged against our brother or sister, and thus against our own self. And thus we have closed our heart to God.

The solution is to love one another now.

It is tempting to think we must undo the apparent effects of the past. We must make amends, say. Or we need to prepare for the future - save up money, stockpile food. But the past and the future are not real and all our fussing over them doesn't change that. Now is the only time there is and there is only one thing we are called to do in and with it: love our brother and sisters.

Please note that as hard that may sound - and given the state of the dream it can sound nigh on impossible - one of the gifts of the holy instant is the actionable insight that the only thing we truly can do is love one another.

The fact that God is Love does not require belief, but it does require acceptance . . . If you deny love, you will not know it because your cooperation is the law of its being. You cannot change laws you did not make, and the laws of happiness were created for you, not by you (T-9.I.11:5, 8-9).

Any problem we take to the Holy Spirit, no matter how specific, no matter how seemingly dependent on the laws of time and space, the answer is always the same: love now. Be kind now. Be gentle now. The past and the future are not our concern. Behold the birds of the heavens and consider the lilies of the field . . .

It is clear, is it not? Like crystal? And yet we fight it every minute of every day. We work so hard not to hear it, let alone make it our practice.

We do not need to undo our own supposed errors. We do not not need to do better going forward. We need simply to give attention to Jesus and the Holy Spirit now, be led by them into the Holy Instant, and there see with calm and quiet certainty that separation is an illusion, as are all its apparent effects.

Christ is the link that keeps you one with God, and guarantees that separation is no more than an illusion of despair, for hope forever will abide in Him. Your mind is part of His, and His of yours. He is the part in which God’s Answer lies; where all decisions are already made, and dreams are over (W-pII.6.2:1-3).

This is the state of Christ. In it, we know that the only thing we can do is love our brothers and sisters. In love, the illusion of past and future are undone. Therefore, in love, there are neither errors nor problems. Our reliance on planning washes gently away.

In love I see you, perfectly whole, brighter than the sun. There is nothing to fear at all. Your radiance encompasses me, dissolves and undoes me, as you are dissolved and undone in God, and God - that idea we've clinging to all these many centuries - is dissolved and undone in Love.

You and your brother will now lead the other to the Father as surely as God created His Son holy, and kept him so. In your brother is the light of God's eternal promise of your immortality. See him as sinless, and there can be no fear in you (T-20.III.11:7-9).

We can’t plan for it! But we can bring it forth by learning how and why we can’t plan for it. Together, let us make it so.

~ Sean