How the Mind leaves the dream of time.

There is a saying in spiritual circles that often causes raised eyebrows:

“The past does not exist.”

It sounds poetic, even radical, but unless it is understood correctly, it can feel dismissive or confusing, as if it were denying the life you remember living.

A Course in Miracles asks for something much simpler and far more compassionate. It asks you to recognize that your history appeared, yes…

but only inside what it calls the “dream of time”.

Sure, within that dream, events feel real, emotions feel real, relationships feel real…..but the only difference between this life-dream and a ‘night-dream’ is the duration.

One lasts minutes, the other decades.

But the structure is identical.

Your photos, your memories, your stories from 1990…they all belong to the dream. They are not meaningless. They are not denied.

But they have no existence outside the mind that remembers them NOW.

The Course says it tenderly: “The past is not here.”

Not erased, not disrespected… simply not HERE.

And this brings us naturally to the holy instant, which is the Course’s answer to the entire puzzle of past thoughts.

Because if the past is part of the life-dream,

and the future is imagination built from the past (and in thought placed in the future) then where can healing happen?

Only in a single place: the Now that is not of this world.

The Course uses time to lead you beyond time, and the holy instant is its quiet doorway. It is not a technique that requires discipline. It is not mindfulness. It is not a perfect focus moment. It is the moment when the mind stops dragging yesterday into today and stops rehearsing tomorrow. It is the willingness to let the dream loosen its grip, even for a breath.

In the holy instant, you do not enter Eternity completely, that comes later,

but you taste it.

You feel the edges of the dream soften.

You experience a clarity that does not come from thinking.

It feels like peace rising from a place you didn’t know you carried.

The world around you may look the same, but something small and

essential has shifted.

You are not defending the life-dream anymore.

Your past thoughts lose their authority because, in that quiet second, you recognize that they arise only now. They are not forces reaching from behind you; they are interpretations appearing in the present mind…interpretations you no longer believe.

This is the secret to forgiveness as ACIM teaches it.

You are not forgiving the past.

You are letting go of the present meaning that pains you now.

The past does not need repair.

Only your perception does.

And perception is healed in the holy instant.

This is why the Course calls it “the closest this world can come to Heaven.”

Not because it changes your circumstances, but because it releases the part of your mind that thinks it lives inside time.

With each holy instant…brief, gentle, and free of effort..the life-dream becomes lighter., and the past fades in importance.

And the present becomes a soft doorway through which a deeper Presence enters.

Eventually you realize that the holy instant is not rare at all.

It keeps knocking every moment you choose love instead of fear,

and slowly remembering us that waking is possible.

With love and light,

G.