The Quiet Answer

Chapter 27 – 4. The Quiet Answer

In quietness are all things answered, and is every problem quietly resolved.
In conflict there can be no answer and no resolution, for its purpose is to
make no resolution possible, and to ensure no answer will be plain. A
problem set in conflict has no answer, for it is seen in different ways. And
what would be an answer from one point of view is not an answer in
another light. You are in conflict. Thus it must be clear you cannot answer
anything at all, for conflict has no limited effects. Yet if God gave an
answer there must be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what
He wills already has been done.
 
Thus it must be that time is not involved and every problem can be
answered now. Yet it must also be that, in your state of mind, solution is
impossible. Therefore, God must have given you a way of reaching to
another state of mind in which the answer is already there. Such is the holy
instant. It is here that all your problems should be brought and left. Here
they belong, for here their answer is. And where its answer is, a problem
must be simple and be easily resolved. It must be pointless to attempt to
solve a problem where the answer cannot be. Yet just as surely it must be
resolved, if it is brought to where the answer is.
 
Attempt to solve no problems but within the holy instant’s surety. For there
the problem will be answered and resolved. Outside there will be no
solution, for there is no answer there that could be found. Nowhere outside
a single, simple question is ever asked. The world can only ask a double
question. One with many answers can have no answers. None of them will
do. It does not ask a question to be answered, but only to restate its point of
view.
 
All questions asked within this world are but a way of looking, not a
question asked. A question asked in hate cannot be answered, because it is
an answer in itself. A double question asks and answers, both attesting the
same thing in different form. The world asks but one question. It is this: “Of
these illusions, which of them is true? Which ones establish peace and offer
joy? And which can bring escape from all the pain of which this world is
made? “Whatever form the question takes, its purpose is the same. It asks
but to establish sin is real, and answers in the form of preference. “Which
sin do you prefer? That is the one that you should choose. The others are not
true. What can the body get that you would want the most of all? It is your
servant and also your friend. But tell it what you want, and it will serve you
lovingly and well. “And this is not a question, for it tells you what you want
and where to go for it. It leaves no room to question its beliefs, except that
what it states takes question’s form.
 
A pseudo-question has no answer. It dictates the answer even as it asks.
Thus is all questioning within the world a form of propaganda for itself. Just
as the body’s witnesses are but the senses from within itself, so are the
answers to the questions of the world contained within the questions that are
asked. Where answers represent the questions, they add nothing new and
nothing has been learned. An honest question is a learning tool that asks for
something that you do not know. It does not set conditions for response, but
merely asks what the response should be. But no one in a conflict state is
free to ask this question, for he does not want an honest answer where the
conflict ends.
 
Only within the holy instant can an honest question honestly be asked. And
from the meaning of the question does the meaningfulness of the answer
come. Here is it possible to separate your wishes from the answer, so it can
be given you and also be received. The answer is provided everywhere. Yet
it is only here it can be heard. An honest answer asks no sacrifice because it
answers questions truly asked. The questions of the world but ask of whom
is sacrifice demanded, asking not if sacrifice is meaningful at all. And so,
unless the answer tells “of whom,” it will remain unrecognized, unheard,
and thus the question is preserved intact because it gave the answer to itself.
The holy instant is the interval in which the mind is still enough to hear an
answer that is not entailed within the question asked. It offers something
new and different from the question. How could it be answered if it but
repeats itself?
 
Therefore, attempt to solve no problems in a world from which the answer
has been barred. But bring the problem to the only place that holds the
answer lovingly for you. Here are the answers that will solve your problems
because they stand apart from them, and see what can be answered; what
the question is. Within the world the answers merely raise another question,
though they leave the first unanswered. In the holy instant, you can bring
the question to the answer, and receive the answer that was made for you.