ACOL BOOK 3 CHAPTER 7: Time and the Experience of Transformation from A Course of Love: Combined Volume (pp. 396-399). Perron, Mari. Take Heart Publications. Kindle Edition.

7.1 Just as when you were a being existing in the shared consciousness of unity you couldn’t know what the experience of form would be like without entering into it, you cannot know the experience of unity without entering into it. To “enter” into the experience of form is something you can picture in your mind, and that you have language to represent because you are aware of the self of form. To “enter” into the experience of unity is something more difficult to imagine, and something for which you have little language.

7.2 You were told within this Course that what you learn in unity is shared. This language was used because you were still, at that time, a learning being. Now we will adjust our language somewhat to represent the new and restate what was said earlier as “What you discover in unity is shared.” Learning does not occur in unity, but discovery is an ongoing aspect of creation and thus of the state of union in which you truly abide.

7.3 You were also told within this Course that because you were learning in separation, unity had to be experienced individually before learning could be shared at another level, and that levels are a function of time. We then talked of the integration of levels that collapse time. This integration of levels is the integration of form and unity. When Christ-consciousness is sustained, time will collapse and the sun may not need to rise or set to separate day into night. Resting and waking will be part of the same continuum of being.

7.4 Experiences of form take place in time because experience, too, was designed for learning. Now experience is needed in time to aid your total acceptance of what you have learned. In order to experience the new you must answer the call to let revelation and discovery, rather than learning, be what you gain from experience.

7.5 What was created cannot be uncreated. Thus transformation is needed. The miracle makes you fully aware of the embrace and the consciousness of unity and places you outside of time. In this state, no duality exists. Doing and being are one.

7.6 Action is the bridge between form and the formless because action is the expression of the self in form. “Right” action comes from the unity in which doing and being are one, or in other words from the state in which there is no division between who you are and what you do. “Right” action comes from the state of wholeness. Being whole is being all you are. Being all you are is what the elevated Self of form represents.

7.7 You have been told that you are time-bound only as a particular self, existing as man or woman in a particular time in history. Now you are called to discover how to exist in form without being defined by this time-bound particularity.

7.8 That you are living form does not require you to be defined by particularity. You can accept the body now as what it is in all its manifestations while not seeing it as “bound” by the particularity of time and space. It may still exist in a particular time and place, but this is simply the nature of one aspect of what you are. The nature of form is that it exists as matter, it occupies space and is perceptible to the senses. You have previously seen this one aspect of form as separating it from mind, heart, and spirit—those aspects that are not perceptible to the senses. But let me repeat that all that lives is from the same Source, and there is nothing more alive than mind and heart combined in the spirit of wholeheartedness.

7.9 Matter is simply another word for content, and need not be maligned. The content of all living things is the energy of the spirit of wholeheartedness. The content of all living things is, in other words, whole. By seeing only aspects of wholeness you have not seen content nor matter truly. You have not been aware of all that you are. You are thus now called to discover and to become aware of all that you are. The body, rather than aiding you in learning as it once did, will aid you now in this discovery.

7.10 Realize that this is a call to love all of yourself. You who once could love spirit or mind, mind or body—because of the dualistic nature associated with them—now can love all of your Self, all of God, all of creation. You can respond to love with love.

7.11 But again, we start with the body, returning love to it now. It is what it is, and nothing that it is, is deserving of anything other than love. This call to love all of your Self is a call to unconditional, nonjudgmental love. It is not just a call to nonjudgmentalness, but to nonjudgmental love. This nonjudgmental love is the condition upon which your discovery of all you do not yet know awaits.

7.12 Discovery is not the same as remembrance. Remembrance was necessary for your return to your true identity, the Self as it was created. Remembrance was not about what you did not know, but about what you knew but had forgotten. Memory has returned you to your Self. Discovery will allow the new you to come into being by revealing what you do not yet know about how to live as the elevated Self of form. 7.13This discovery can only take place in the reality of love.

7.14 Being in love is a definition of what you now are as you accept the unconditional, nonjudgmental love of all. This is a transference of love from the particular to the universal. Loving all that you are, including your body, is not love of the particular but universal love. The old way in which you related to your body, be it a love or a hate relationship, was a particular relationship with the vessel that only seemed to contain you. It was a relationship with the separated self. Now, because your relationship is with wholeness, you can transfer love from the particular to the universal by loving all. We are one body, one Christ.

7.15 The observation, envisioning, and desire you have been practicing in order to be ready to accept revelation works hand in hand with the new pattern of discovery, but discovery is less time bound. Let me explain.

7.16 Observation takes place in time. Even while you have been called to observe what is, what you are observing in form are the representations of what is in time. Your envisioning too is bound to time and that is why so many of you think of envisioning as envisioning the future. Envisioning is less bound to time than is observation because it is not about what your body’s eyes see, and will increasingly join with what you observe until your vision is released from old patterns and guides you more truly.

7.17 Desire is an acknowledgment of the uniqueness of each Self, and is a demonstration of means and end being the same. Desire keeps you focused on your own path and leaves you nonjudgmental of the paths of others. Yet desire, like observation and vision, is still related to the self of form. It is a step toward full acceptance and awareness of who you are now and what this means as you become the elevated Self of form.

7.18 Revelation is of God. Observation, vision, and desire are steps leading you beyond what the individual, separated self sees, to the revelation of what is. These steps that lead to revelation are not ongoing aspects of creation, because they are related to particular forms as they exist in time. Time is not an aspect of eternity or of unity. Time is thus what has separated the self that exists in form from the Self that exists in union or the state of Christ-consciousness. By becoming one body, one Christ, you have accepted existence as a non-particular being in a state outside of time—you have accepted existence as a new Self, the Self of elevated form. You just do not yet understand what this means.

7.19 Discovery is not bound by time as it is an ongoing aspect of creation. As you were told in “A Treatise on the New”, the future is yet to be created. While this seems like a time-bound statement, it is not. It is merely one way of stating that creation is ongoing rather than static. That while creation is and is as it was created, it was created to be eternally expanding and expressing in new ways.

7.20 With your new awareness you are now linked, through the consciousness of unity, with the entire field of creation, rather than only with the time-bound field of creation of form. As your awareness grows, you will begin to expand and express in new ways. Those ways thus now include the form of your body without being limited to creation of, and in, form. The body has thus joined creation in a non-time-bound way.

7.21 Evolution is the time-bound way in which the body has participated in creation. This is why you have been told that you are not called to evolution. Time-bound evolution is the way of the creature, the natural response of the living organism to the stimulus of matter upon matter, and of the creature’s perception of its own experience in time. This time-bound evolution is really adaptation. It occurs in reaction to what is perceived as necessary for survival.

7.22 Time-bound evolution is still surely going on, and as the planet becomes crowded, as progress has left so many unfulfilled, as environmental concerns mount, even the perceived survival needs are leading you toward new answers of what survival may mean.

7.23 Everyone knows, in this time of Christ, that the end of the old way is near and that the new is coming. They are thus moving toward anticipation rather than adaptation, and evolution moves with them. But evolution in time is part of the old that needs to be left behind. It is a provision of the time of learning that allows the learning being to learn at his or her own pace and to pass this learning on in time.

7.24 Everyone knows that this has not worked to improve the fate of man. Everyone secretly fears that evolution will not keep pace with the changing world and that man’s reign over his environment will come to an abrupt and painful end. Some even fear an evolutionary setback, and see any threat against civilization as they know it as a return to barbaric times.

7.25 These scenarios of fear we leave behind as we abandon ideas of evolution in time and proceed to an awareness of how the elevated Self of form can replace the laws of evolution in time with the laws of transformation outside of time.

7.26 In order to facilitate your understanding, I call you now to imagine your body as a dot in the center of a circle and the circle as representing all that you are. The dot of your body is all that is bound by time. What transformation outside of time asks you to do is to see the body as but this one, small, aspect of what you are. In observing both yourself and others, you have learned to view your body in the field of time. This will be helpful now as you begin to imagine the “more” that you are, the “more” that exists beyond the body’s boundary and beyond the boundary of time and particularity.

7.27 This circle in which you have placed your body is not a circle of time and space. It is not a circle that can be drawn around where you exist so as to define, perhaps, a mile of space and say that this is all you. No, the circle that exists around you is the circle of shared consciousness, the circle of unity. In truth, this circle is everything, the All of All, the universe, God. But just as the Earth can be seen as your home, although you are rarely consciously aware of existing in this “larger” home, you will not always be aware of this circle of the Self as the All of Everything, and it will, in fact, be helpful as we begin, to imagine on a smaller scale.

7.28 You might begin by imagining first your actual, physical, home, then your neighborhood, community, city, state, country. You see yourself as most your “self” in your home, your neighborhood, your community. You identify with the citizens of the city, state, and country you occupy. You have an address, perhaps a yard, or farm, perhaps a public spot that has become a favorite park or lake or beach that you consider partially yours. You have a route to and from your work or other places that you go, where you see familiar landmarks, structures, faces. You visit the homes of friends and relatives, your church, perhaps a school or library, certain restaurants or places of civic duty or social engagement. You may expand this small territory you call your own with business travel or vacations, and have more than one locale that feels like home; or you may never travel far from the building in which you dwell. What I ask you to do is to think of these areas as the territory of your body, and to remember that while this is your territory, it is a shared territory and a territory within the territory of planet Earth.

7.29 Thus we will begin once again with parameters, with a territory of shared consciousness, rather than with consciousness of the All of Everything. This territory we will call the territory of your conscious awareness. This territory of conscious awareness is shared with the larger consciousness of unity, just as the territory of your body is shared with those who live and work nearby. This territory of conscious awareness exists within the larger consciousness of unity, just as the territory of your body exists within the larger territory of the planet Earth. We will begin here, with the territory of your conscious awareness, knowing that discovery and revelation will expand this territory, and realizing that no matter how small this cosmic territory may be, it will still at times give way to awareness of the All of Everything.

Perron, Mari. A Course of Love: Combined Volume (pp. 396-399). Take Heart Publications. Kindle Edition.