To change is to be vulnerable. And to be vulnerable is to be alive.

We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.

See in the special relationship nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods before Him, and by worshipping them to obscure their tiny-ness and His greatness. In the name of your completion you do not want this. For every idol that you raise to place before Him stands before you, in place of what you are.

Yet the one thing the ego never allows to reach awareness is that the special relationship is the acting out of vengeance on yourself. Yet what else could it be? In seeking the special relationship, you look not for glory in yourself. You have denied that it is there, and the relationship becomes your substitute for it.

Call not upon the ego for anything; it is only this that you need do. The Holy Spirit will, of himself, fill every mind that so makes room for him.

There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they are all the same. Each is a gentle winning over from the appeal of guilt to the appeal of love.

The holy instant is nothing more than a special case, or an extreme example, of what every situation is meant to be. The meaning that the Holy Spirit's purpose has given it is also given to every situation. It calls forth just the same suspension of faithlessness, withheld and left unused, that faith might answer to the call of truth. The holy instant is the shining example, the clear and unequivocal demonstration of the meaning of every relationship and every situation, seen as a whole. Faith has accepted every aspect of the situation, and faithlessness has not forced any exclusion on it. It is a situation of perfect peace, simply because you have let it be what it is.

You merely ask the question. The answer is given. Seek not to answer, but merely to receive the answer as it is given. In preparing for the holy instant, do not attempt to make yourself holy to be ready to receive it. That is but to confuse your role with God's. Atonement cannot come to those who think that they must first atone, but only to those who offer it nothing more than simple willingness to make way for it. Purification is of God alone, and therefore for you. Rather than seek to prepare yourself for him, try to think thus:
I who am host to God am worthy of him. He who established His dwelling place in me created it as he would have it be. It is not needful that I make it ready for him, but only that I do not interfere with his plan to restore to me my own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal. I need add nothing to his plan. But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my own in place of it. And that is all. Add more, and you will merely take away the little that is asked.

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.