 We continue today with Chapter 13, Finding the Present. To perceive truly is to be aware of all reality through the awareness of your own. But for this, no illusions can rise to meet your sight, for reality leaves no room for any error. This means that you perceive a brother only as you see him now. His past has no reality in the present, so you cannot see it. Your past reactions to him are also not there. And if it is to them that you react, you see but an image of him that you made and cherish instead of him. In your questioning of illusions, ask yourself if it is really sane to perceive what was as now. If you remember the past as you look upon your brother, you will be unable to perceive the reality that is now. You consider it, quote, natural to use your past experience as the reference point from which to judge the present. Yet this is unnatural because it is delusional. When you have learned to look on everyone with no reference at all to his past, either his or yours as you perceive it, you will be able to learn from what you see now. For the past can cast no shadow to darken the present unless you are afraid of light. And only if you are would you choose to bring darkness with you. And by holding it in your mind, see it as a dark cloud that shrouds your brothers and conceals their reality from your sight. This darkness is in you. The Christ as revealed to you now has no past, for he is changeless, and in his changelessness lies your release. For if he is as he was he created, there is no guilt in him. No cloud of guilt has risen to obscure him, and he stands revealed in everyone you meet because you see him through himself. To be born again is to let the past go and look without condemnation upon the present. The cloud that obscures God's son to you is the past. And if you would have it past and gone, you must not see it now. If you see it now in your illusions, it has not gone from you, although it is not there. Time can release as well as in prison, depending on whose interpretation of it you use. Past, present, and future are not continuous unless you force continuity on them. You can perceive them as continuous and make them so for you. But do not be deceived and then believe that this is how it is. For to believe reality is what you would have it be according to your use for it is delusional. You would destroy time's continuity by breaking it into past, present, and future for your own purposes. You would anticipate the future on the basis of your past experience and plan for it accordingly. Yet by doing so, you are aligning past and future and not allowing the miracle which could intervene between them to free you to be born again. The miracle enables you to see your brother without his past and so perceive him as born again. His errors are all past, and by perceiving him without them you are releasing him. And since his past is yours, you share in this release. Let no dark cloud out of your past obscure him from you, for truth lies only in the present and you will find it if you seek it there. You have looked for it where it is not and therefore have not found it. Learn then to seek it where it is and it will dawn on eyes that see. Your past was made in anger and if you use it to attack the present, you will not see the freedom that the present holds. Judgment and condemnation are behind you and unless you bring them with you, you will see that you are free of them. Look lovingly upon the present, for it holds the only things that are forever true. All healing lies within it because its continuity is real. It extends to all aspects of the sonship at the same time and thus enables them to reach each other. The present is before time was and will be when time is no more. In it are all things that are eternal and they are one. Their continuity is timeless and their communication is unbroken, for they are not separated by the past. Only the past can separate and it is nowhere. The present offers you your brothers and the light that would unite you with them and free you from the past. Would you then hold the past against them? For if you do, you are choosing to remain in the darkness that is not there and refusing to accept the light that has offered you. For the light of perfect vision is freely given as it is freely received and can be accepted only without limit. In this one still dimension of time that does not change and where there is no sight of what you were, you look at Christ and call his witnesses to shine on you because you called them forth and they will not deny the truth in you because you look for it in them and found it there. Now is the time of salvation, for now is the release from time. Reach out to all your brothers and touch them with the touch of Christ. In timeless union with them is your continuity, unbroken because it is wholly shared. God's guiltless son is only light. There is no darkness in him anywhere, for he is whole. Call all your brothers to witness to his wholeness as I am calling you to join with me. Each voice has a part in the song of redemption, the hymn of gladness and thanksgiving for the light to the Creator of light. The holy light that shines forth from God's Son is the witness that his light is of his Father. Shine on your brothers in remembrance of your Creator, for you will remember him as you call forth the witnesses to his creation. Those whom you heal bear witness to your healing, for in their wholeness you will see your own. And as your hymns of praise and gladness rise to your Creator, he will return your thanks in his clear answer to your call. For it can never be that his Son called upon him and remained unanswered. His call to you is but your call to him, and in him you are answered by his peace. Child of light, you know not that the light is in you, yet you will find it through his witnesses, for having given light to them they will return it. Each one you see in light brings your light closer to your awareness. Love always leads to love. The sick who ask for love are grateful for it, and in their joy they shine with holy thanks. And this they offer you who gave them joy. They are your guides to joy, for having received it of you they would keep it. You have established them as guides to peace, for you have made it manifest in them. And seeing it, his beauty calls you home. There is a light that this world cannot give, yet you can give it as it was given you. And as you give it, it shines forth to call you from the world and follow it. For this light will attract you as nothing in this world can do, and you will lay aside the world and find another. This other world is bright with love, which you have given it. And here will everything remind you of your Father and His Holy Son. Light is unlimited and spreads across this world in quiet joy. All those you brought with you will shine on you, and you will shine on them in gratitude because they brought you here. Your light will join with theirs in power so compelling that it will draw the others out of darkness as you look on them. Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love of your free will, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them, the attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by giving. Those who accept love of you become your willing witnesses to the love you gave them, and it is they who hold it out to you. In sleep you are alone, and your awareness is narrowed to yourself. And that is why the nightmares come. You dream of isolation because your eyes are closed. You do not see your brothers, and in the darkness you cannot look upon the light you gave to them. And yet the laws of love are not suspended because you sleep. And you have followed them through all your nightmares and have been faithful in your giving, for you were not alone. Even in sleep has Christ protected you in sharing the real world for you when you awake. In your name he has given for you and given you the gifts he gave. God's Son is still as loving as his Father. Continuous with his Father, he has no past apart from him, so he has never ceased to be his Father's witness and his own. Although he slept, Christ's vision did not leave him. And so it is that he can call unto himself the witnesses that teach him that he never slept. And from the workbook, Lesson 99, Salvation is my only function here. Salvation and forgiveness are the same. They both imply that something has gone wrong, something to be saved from, forgiven for, something amiss that needs corrective change, something apart or different from the will of God. Thus do both terms imply a thing impossible, but yet which has occurred, resulting in a state of conflict seen between what is and what could never be. Truth and illusions both are equal now, for both have happened. Impossible becomes the thing you need forgiveness for, salvation from. Salvation now becomes the borderland between the truth and the illusion. It reflects the truth because it is the means by which you can escape illusions. Yet it is not yet the truth because it undoes what was never done. How could there be a meeting place at all where earth and heaven can be reconciled within a mind where both of them exist? The mind that sees illusions thinks them real. They have existence in that they are thoughts, and yet they are not real because the mind that thinks these thoughts is separate from God. What joins the separated mind and the thoughts with capital mind and capital thought which are forever one? What plan could hold the truth in violet yet recognize the need illusions bring and offer means by which they are undone without attack and with no touch of pain? What but a thought of God could be this plan by which the never done is overlooked and sins forgotten which were never real? The Holy Spirit holds this plan of God exactly as it was received of him within the mind of God and in your own. It is apart from time in that its source is timeless. Yet it operates in time because of your belief that time is real. Unshaken does the Holy Spirit look on what you see, on sin and pain and death, on grief and separation and on loss. Yet does he know one thing must still be true? God is still love and this is not his will. This is the thought that brings illusions to the truth and sees them as appearances behind which is the changeless and the sure. This is the thought that saves and that forgives because it lays no faith in what is not created by the only source it knows. This is the thought whose function is to save by giving you its function as your own. Salvation is your function with the one to whom the plan was given. Now are you entrusted with this plan along with him? He has one answer to appearances regardless of their form, their size, their depth or any attribute they seem to have. Salvation is my only function here. God still is love and this is not his will. You who will yet work miracles, be sure you practice well the idea for today. Try to perceive the strength in what you say, for these are words in which your freedom lies. Your father loves you. All the world of pain is not his will. Forgive yourself the thought he wanted this for you. Then let the thought with which he has replaced all your mistakes enter the darkened places of your mind that thought the thoughts that never were his will. This part belongs to God as does the rest. It does not think it's solitary thoughts and make them real by hiding them from him. Let in the light and you will look upon no obstacle to what he wills for you. Open your secrets to his kindly light and see how bright this light still shines in you. Practice his thought today and let his light seek out and lighten up all darkened spots and shine through them to join them to the rest. It is God's will your mind be one with his. It is God's will that he has but one son. It is God's will that his one son is you. Think of these things in practicing today and start the lesson that we learned today with this instruction in the way of truth. Salvation is my only function here. Salvation and forgiveness are the same. Then turn to him who shares your function here and let him teach you what you need to learn to lay all fear aside and know yourself as love which has no opposite in you. Forgive all thoughts which would oppose the truth of your completion, unity and peace. You cannot lose the gifts your father gave. You do not want to be another self. You have no function that is not of God. Forgive yourself the one you think you made. Forgiveness and salvation are the same. Forgive what you have made and you are saved. There is a special message for today which has the power to remove all forms of doubt and fear forever from your mind. If you are tempted to believe them true remember that appearances cannot withstand the truth these mighty words contain. Salvation is my only function here. God still is love and this is not his will. Your only function tells you you are one. Remind yourself of this between the times you give five minutes to be shared with him who shares God's plan with you. Remind yourself salvation is my only function here. Best you lay forgiveness on your mind and let all fear be gently laid aside that love may find its rightful place in you and show you that you are the Son of God. Salvation is my only function here. Today this instant find the present moment. Today the error of linear time is undone. The error of seeking continuity in past, present and future is over now. Today I will not force continuity on past, present and future. Present is real. Alive in God's presence past is gone. Future but imagined unreal. Think this way of your brother as you see him only now. His past has no reality in the present so you cannot see it. Your past reactions to him are also not there and if it is to them that you react you see but an image of him that you made and cherish instead of him. In your question of illusions ask yourself if it is really sane to perceive what was as now. If you remember the past as you look upon your brother you will be unable to perceive the reality that is now. The only problem is a memory problem trying to remember the past. This will not work. The past was used as a reference point from which to judge the present. Yet this is unnatural because it is delusional. When you have learned to look on everyone with no reference at all to the past either his or yours as you perceived it. You will be able to learn from what you see now. For the past can cast no shadow to darken the present unless you are afraid of light. And only if you are would you choose to bring darkness with you. And by holding it in your mind see it as a dark cloud that shrouds your brothers and conceals their reality from your sight. Today we go past the darkness, past the cloud of guilt to the Christ within. To be born again is to let the past go and look without condemnation upon the present. The past is gone. You cannot see it now. Thus we give time to the Holy Spirit that it may free us free the mind by the Holy Spirit's interpretation of it. Today we see continuity in the Holy Spirit, in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is continuous. Eternity has no past and no future. These are unreal concepts. Now is the time of salvation. For now is the release from time. Shine on your brothers in remembrance of your Creator. For you will remember Him as you call forth the witnesses to His creation. Today I call upon the witnesses that point me to the present moment. That point me inward. No longer will I seek for the light where it cannot be found. Today I turn within. There is a light that this world cannot give. Yet you can give it as it was given you. And as you give it, it shines forth to call you from the world and follow it. For this light will attract you as nothing in this world can do. And you will lay aside the world and find another. This other world is bright with love which you have given it. And here will everything remind you of your Father and His Holy Son. Light is unlimited and spreads across this world in quiet joy. And all those you brought with you will shine on you and you will shine on them in gratitude because they brought you here. Your light will join with theirs in power so compelling that it will draw the others out of darkness as you look on them. Today we follow the laws of love. Today we follow the laws of God's happy free will. Free will for happiness of all creation. We practice well our lesson of the day. Salvation is my only function here. God still is love. And this is not His will. As we look upon the world of linear time, linear time is not God's will. Salvation is my only function here. Salvation and forgiveness are the same. Salvation is my only function here. God still is love. And this is not His will. As we look upon the world, seems to be separate objects held apart by time and space. We remember God still is love and this is not His will. Salvation is my only function here. Today I would lay forgiveness on my mind and let all fear be gently laid aside that love may find its rightful place within me and show me that I am the Holy Son of God. Salvation is my only function here. Amen.