 We continue today from downtown Shanghai, China, with Chapter 13, The Function of Time. And now the reason why you are afraid of this Course should be apparent, for this is a Course on love because it is about you. You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in heaven is creating. The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and you have no function at all in heaven. It would thus destroy you here and bury you here, leaving you no inheritance except the dust out of which it thinks you were made. As long as it is reasonably satisfied with you as its reasoning goes, it offers you oblivion. When it becomes overtly savage, it offers you hell. Yet neither oblivion nor hell is as unacceptable to you as heaven. Your definition of heaven is hell and oblivion, and the real heaven is the greatest threat you think you could experience. For hell and oblivion are ideas that you made up, and you are bent on demonstrating their reality to establish yours. If their reality is questioned, you believe that yours is, for you believe that attack is your reality, and that your destruction is the final proof that you are right. Under the circumstances, would it not be more desirable to have been wrong, even apart from the fact that you were wrong? While it could perhaps be argued that death suggests there was life, no one would claim that it proves there is life. Even the past life that death might indicate could only have been futile if it must come to this and needs this to prove that it was at all. You question heaven, but you do not question this. Yet you could heal and be healed if you did question it. And even though you do not know heaven, might it not be a more desirable experience than death? You have been as selective in your questioning as in your perception. An open mind is more honest than this. The ego has a strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that your questioning might well begin. The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end believes that the past is the only aspect of time that is meaningful. Remember that its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like the past and thus avoiding the present. By the notion of paying for the past in the future, the past becomes the determiner of the future, making them continuous without intervening present. For the ego regards the present only as a brief transition to the future in which it brings the past to the future by interpreting the present in past terms. Now has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of past hurts, and it reacts to the present as if it were the past. The ego cannot tolerate release from the past, and although the past is over, the ego tries to preserve its image by responding as if it were present. It dictates your reactions to those you meet in the present from a past reference point obscuring their present reality. In effect, if you follow the ego's dictates, you will react to your brothers as though he were someone else, and this will surely prevent you from recognizing him as he is. And you will receive the messages from him out of your own past because by making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself to let it go. You thus deny yourself the message of release that every brother offers you now. The shadowy figures from the past are precisely what you must escape. They are not real and have no hold over you unless you bring them with you. They carry the spots of pain in your mind, directing you to attack in the present and retaliation for a past that is no more. And this decision is one of future pain. Unless you learn that past pain is an illusion, you are choosing a future of illusions and losing the many opportunities you could find for release in the present. The ego would preserve your nightmares and prevent you from awakening and understanding their past. Would you recognize a holy encounter if you are merely perceiving it as a meeting with your own past? For you would be meeting no one, and the sharing of salvation, which makes the holy encounter, would be excluded from your sight. The Holy Spirit teaches that you always meet yourself and the encounter is holy because you are. The ego teaches that you always encounter your past and because your dreams were not holy, the future cannot be and the present is without meaning. It is evident that the Holy Spirit's perception of time is the exact opposite of the ego's. The reason is equally clear for they perceive the goal of time as diametrically opposed. The Holy Spirit interprets time's purpose as rendering the need for time unnecessary. He regards the function of time as temporary, serving only his teaching function, which is temporary by definition. His emphasis is therefore on the only aspect of time that can extend to the infinite, for now is the closest approximation of eternity that this world offers. It is in the reality of the now without past or future that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies, for only now is here and only now presents the opportunities for the holy encounters in which salvation can be found. The ego on the other hand regards the function of time as one of extending itself in place of eternity. For like the Holy Spirit, the ego interprets the goal of time as its own. The continuity of past and future under its direction is the only purpose the ego perceives in time and it closes over the present so that no gap in its own continuity can occur. His continuity then would keep you in time while the Holy Spirit would release you from it. It is his interpretation of the means of salvation that you must learn to accept if you would share his goal of salvation for you. You too will interpret the function of time as you interpret yours. If you accept your function in the world of time as one of healing, you will emphasize only the aspect of time in which healing can occur. Healing cannot be accomplished in the past. It must be accomplished in the present to release the future. This interpretation ties the future to the present and extends the present rather than the past. But if you interpret your function as destruction, you will lose sight of the present and hold onto a past to ensure a destructive future and time will be as you interpret it for of itself. It is nothing. And from the workbook, lesson number 97, I am spirit. Today's idea identifies you with your one self. It accepts no split identity nor tries to weave opposing factors into unity. It simply states the truth. Practice this truth today as often as you can for it will bring your mind from conflict to the quiet fields of peace. No chill of fear can enter for your mind has been absolved from madness, letting go illusions of a split identity. We state again the truth about yourself, the Holy Son of God, who rests in you, whose mind has been restored to sanity. You are the spirit lovingly endowed with all your father's love and peace and joy. You are the spirit which completes himself and shares his function as creator. He is with you always as you are with him. Today we try to bring reality still closer to your mind. Each time you practice, awareness is brought a little nearer at least, sometimes a thousand years or more are saved. The minutes which you give are multiplied over and over for the miracle makes use of time but is not ruled by it. Salvation is a miracle, the first and the last. The first that is the last, for it is one. You are the spirit in whose mind abides the miracle in which all time stands still. The miracle in which a minute spent in using these ideas becomes a time that has no limit and that has no end. Give then these minutes willingly and come on him who promised to lay timelessness beside them. He will offer all his strength to every little effort that you make. Give him the minutes which he needs today to help you understand with him your spirit that abides in him and that calls through his voice to every living thing, offers his sight to everyone who asks, replaces error with the simple truth. The Holy Spirit will be glad to take your five minutes of each hour from your hands and carry them around this aching world where pain and misery appear to rule. He will not overlook one open mind that will accept the healing gifts they bring. He will lay them everywhere. He knows they will be welcome and they will increase in healing power each time someone accepts them as his thoughts and uses them to heal. Thus will each gift to him be multiplied a thousandfold and tens of thousands more and when it is returned to you it will suppress in might the little gift you gave as much as he does the radiance of the sun shine outside the dream the tiny gleam of the firefight makes an uncertain moment and goes out. The steady brilliance of this light remains and leads you out of darkness nor will you be able to forget the way again. Begin these happy exercises with the words the Holy Spirit speaks to you and let them echo round the world through him. Spirit, am I, a holy Son of God, free of all limits, safe and healed and whole, free to forgive and free to save the world. Expressed through you the Holy Spirit will accept this gift that you received of him, increase its power and give it back to you. Offer each practice period today gladly to him and he will speak to you reminding you that your spirit, one with him and God, your brothers and yourself listen for his assurance every time you speak the words he offers you today and let him tell your mind that they are true. Use them against temptation and escape its sorry consequences if you yield to the belief that you are something else. The Holy Spirit gives you peace today, receive his words and offer them to him. I am Spirit. So today we go past all competing concepts and ideas to the light of truth in our hearts, in our minds. Today's lesson reminds us of our true nature. Today we would identify with Spirit not with a split mind not with a body but with the Christ with the Father's love and peace and joy. Today we see the true function of time. The Holy Spirit's use of time is washing away the belief in linear time washing away the belief the past is real washing away the belief that the future is a product of the past opening to the present moment fresh and clean and clear of the past. Today the present moment is our gateway to eternal life. Today we heal as we withdraw all investment in the past and the future. We are reminded by Jesus that now has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of past hurts and it reacts to the present as if it were the past. Today we would release these ideas of past and future. Today we will give no heed to the shadowy figures from the past. We would be absolved of all the past is taught. We turn to the Holy Spirit to guide us in this practice. Today our forgiveness is our function and we forgive the past and the belief in the future. Today we have a change of interpretation about the time and its function and we open up as we practice our lesson of the day. I am Spirit. Amen.