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A Course in Miracles The Atonement The Atonement was established as the means of restoring guiltlessness to minds that have denied it, and thus denied Heaven to themselves. Here is the end of choice. For
here we come to a decision to accept ourselves as God
created us.
There is no doubt that is not rooted here. There is no question but reflects this one. There is no conflict that does not entail the single, simple question
Only
refusal to accept yourself could make the question seem
to be sincere.
The only thing that can be surely known by any living thing is what it is. From this one point of certainty, it looks on other things as certain as itself. Uncertainty about what you must be is self-deception on a scale so vast, its magnitude can hardly be conceived. To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead. For what is life except to be yourself? And
what but you can be alive instead?
He merely states that he is not himself, and therefore, being something else, becomes a questioner of what that something is.
If he asks as if he does not know, it merely shows he does not want to be the thing he is. He has accepted it because he lives; has judged against it and denied its worth, and has decided that he does not know the only certainty by which he lives. Thus he becomes uncertain of his life. For what it is, has been denied by him. Denial
Of What You Are
It is for this denial (of what you are), that you need Atonement. Your denial made no change in what you are, but you have split your mind into
You are yourself. There is no doubt of this, and yet you doubt it. But you do not ask what part of you can really doubt yourself. It cannot really be a part of you that asks this question, for it asks of one who knows the answer. Were it part of you, then certainty would be impossible (forever). Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself, and be unsure of what you really are. This is the depth of madness. Yet it is the universal question of the world. What does this prove except the world is mad? Why
share its madness in the sad belief that what is
universal here is true?
The Atonement Does Not Make Holy The
Atonement does not make holy. You
were created holy. It
merely brings unholiness to holiness; or what you
made (of yourself) to what you (really) are.
The bringing together of truth and illusion, of the ego to God, is the Holy Spirit's only function. Keep not your making (of yourself) from your Father, for hiding it has cost you knowledge of Him and of yourselves. The
knowledge (of who you really are) is safe, but wherein
is your safety apart from it?
The making of time to take the place of timelessness lay in the decision to be not as you were. Thus, truth was made past, and the present was dedicated to illusion. And the past, too, was changed and interposed between what always was and now. The past that you remember never was, and represents only the denial of that always was. Bringing the ego to God is but to bring error to truth, where it stands corrected because it is the opposite of what it meets, and is undone because the contradiction can no longer stand. How
long can contradiction stand when its impossible nature
is clearly revealed?
What disappears in light is not attacked. It merely vanishes because it is not true. Undoing Is For Unreality Different realities are meaningless, for reality must be one. It cannot change with time or mood or chance. Its changelessness is what makes it real. This cannot be undone.
And this reality will do for you. Merely by being what it is does truth release you from everything that it is not. The
Atonement is so gentle you need but whisper to it,
and all its power will rush to your assistance and
support.
You are not frail with God beside you. But without Him you are nothing. The Atonement offers you God. The gift which you refused is held by Him in you. His Spirit holds it there for you. God has not left His altar, though His worshippers placed other gods upon it. The temple still is holy, for the Presence that dwells within it is holiness. In
the temple, holiness waits quietly for the return
of them that love it. For
the Presence knows they will return to purity and
to grace. The graciousness of God will take them gently
in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss with
the immortal assurance of their Father's Love.
For God is Life, and they abide in Life. The Presence of holiness lives in everything that lives, for holiness created life, and leaves not what It created holy as Itself. Atonement Defense The Atonement is the only defense which cannot be used destructively. That is because, while everyone must eventually join it, it is not a device which was generated by man. The Atonement principle was in effect long before the Atonement itself began.
Acts
were not necessary before the separation, because
the time-space belief did not exist.
It was only after the separation that the defense of Atonement, and the necessary conditions for its fulfillment, were planned. The Atonement is The Final Lesson The Atonement was built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief, and ultimately to make learning complete. Learning itself, like the classrooms in which it occurs, is temporary. Let all those who overestimate human intelligence remember this:
The
eternally creative have nothing to learn. Only
after the separation was it necessary to direct the
creative forces to learning, because changed behavior
had become mandatory.
Human beings can learn to improve their behavior, and can also learn to become better and better learners. This increase serves to bring them into closer and closer accord with the Sonship. But the Sonship Itself is a perfect Creation, and perfection is not a matter of degree. Only while there are different degrees is learning meaningful. The evolution of man is merely a process by which he proceeds from one degree to the next.
This represents a process which is actually incomprehensible in temporal terms, because he returns as he goes forward. The
Atonement is the device by which he can free himself
from the past as he goes ahead. It
undoes his past errors, thus making it unnecessary
for him to keep retracing his steps without advancing
to his return.
In this sense, the Atonement saves time, but, like the miracle which serves it, does not abolish it. As long as there is need for Atonement there is need for time. But the Atonement, as a completed plan, does have a unique relationship to time. Until the Atonement is finished, its various phases will proceed in time, but the whole Atonement stands at time's end. At this point, the bridge of the return has been built. You still think this is associated with loss. This is the same mistake all the separated ones make, in one way or another. They cannot believe that a defense which cannot attack is the best defense.
A two-way defense is inherently weak precisely because it has two edges, and can turn against the self very unexpectedly. This tendency cannot be controlled except by miracles. The miracle turns the defense of Atonement to the protection of the inner Self, which, as it becomes more and more secure, assumes its natural talent of protecting others. The inner Self knows Itself as both a brother and a Son.
Before the separation, the mind was invulnerable to fear, because fear did not exist. Both the separation and the fear are miscreations of the mind, which must be undone.
This heals the separation, and places within man the one defense against all separation-mind errors which can make him perfectly invulnerable.
In fact, both time and matter were created for this purpose. This appears to contradict free will because of the inevitability of the final decision. If you review the idea carefully, however, you will realize that this is not true. Everything is limited in some way by the manner of its creation. Free will can temporize, and is capable of enormous procrastination, but it cannot depart entirely from its Creator, Who set the limits on its ability to miscreate by virtue of its own real purpose. The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless.
As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the Spiritual eye (Holy Spirit), simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute. But the outcome is as certain as God. The
Spiritual eye (Holy Spirit) literally cannot see error
and merely looks for Atonement. All the solutions
which the physical eyes seek dissolve in Its sight.
The Spiritual eye (Holy Spirit), which looks within,
recognizes immediately that the altar has been defiled,
and needs to be repaired and protected.
Perfectly aware of the right defense, it passes over all others, looking past error to truth. Because of the real strength of its vision, it pulls the will into its service and impels the mind to concur. This reestablishes the true power of the will, and makes it increasingly unable to tolerate delay. The
mind then realizes, with increasing certainty, that
delay is only a way of increasing unnecessary pain
which it need not tolerate at all.
The pain threshold drops accordingly, and the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort.
Until they achieve this, they waste themselves and their true creative powers on useless attempts to make themselves more comfortable by inappropriate means. But the real means is already provided, and does not involve any effort at all on their part. Their egocentricity usually misperceives this as personally insulting, an interpretation which obviously arises from their misperception of themselves. Egocentricity and communion cannot coexist. Even the terms are contradictory. The Atonement is the only gift that is worthy of being offered to the altar of God. This is because of the inestimable value of the altar itself. It was created perfect, and is entirely worthy of receiving perfection. Men
must learn to perceive the world as a means of healing
the separation. The Atonement is the guarantee that
they will utlimately succeed.
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Miracle Principle #25 Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. This process works all the time, and in all the dimensions of time. I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin. When
you offer a miracle unto any of my brothers,
you do it unto yourself and me.
The reason you come before me is that I do not need miracles for my own Atonement, but I stand at the end in case you fail temporarily. The
purpose of my part in the Atonement is the
canceling out of all lacks of love which men
could not otherwise correct.
The word “sin” should be changed to “lack of love,” because “sin” is a man-made word with threat connotations which he made up himself. No real threat is involved anywhere. Nothing is gained by frightening yourselves, and it is very destructive to do so. Accepting
The Atonement
God cannot ask more than you will. The strength to do comes from your own undivided will to do. There is no strain in doing God’s Will as soon as you recognize that it is also your own. The lesson here is quite simple, but particularly apt to be overlooked. I will therefore repeat it, urging you to listen. Only your mind can produce fear. It does so whenever it is conflicted in what it wills (wants), thus producing inevitable strain, because willing and doing become discordant. This cannot be corrected by better DOING, but it can be corrected by higher WILLING. The first corrective step is know first that this is an expression of fear. Then say to yourself that you must somehow have willed not to love, or the fear which arises from behavior-will conflict could not have arisen. Then the whole process is nothing more than a series of pragmatic steps in the larger process of accepting the Atonement as the remedy. These steps can be summarized as follows: 1. Know first
that this is fear. We have emphasized that the miracle, or the expression of Atonement, is always a sign of real respect from the worthy to the worthy. This worth is re-established by the Atonement. It is obvious, then, that when you are afraid you have placed yourself in a position where you need Atonement, because you have done something loveless, having willed without love (because you have forgotten your worth). This is precisely the situation for which the Atonement was offered. The need for the remedy inspired its creation. As long as you recognize only the need for the remedy, you will remain fearful. However, as soon as you remedy it, you have also abolished the fear. This is how true healing occurs. Chap 2 Correction For Lack of Love We Have A Mission Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are. And they will come again until the time Atonement is accepted, and they learn it is impossible to doubt yourself, and not to be aware of what you are. Only
acceptance (of what you are) can be asked of you,
for what you are is certain.
It is set forever in the holy Mind of God, and in your own. It is so far beyond all doubt and question, that to ask what it must be, is all the proof you need to show that you believe the contradiction that you know not what you cannot fail to know. Is
this a question, or a statement which denies itself
in statement?
Let us not allow our holy minds to occupy themselves with senseless musings such as this. We have a mission here. We did not come to reinforce the madness that we once believed in. Let us not forget the goal that we accepted. It is more than just our happiness alone we came to gain. What we accept as what we are proclaims what everyone must be, along with us. Fail not your brothers, or you fail yourself. Look lovingly on them, that they may know that they are part of you, and you of them. This does Atonement teach, and demonstrates the oneness of God's Son is unassailed by his belief he knows not what he is. Today accept atonement; not to change reality, but merely to accept the truth about yourself, and go your way rejoicing in the endless Love of God. It is but this that we are asked to do. It is but this that we will do today. "I
will accept Atonement for myself, for I remain
as God created me."
We have not lost the knowledge that God gave to us when He created us like Him. We can remember it for everyone, for in creation are all minds as one. And in our memory is the recall how dear our brothers are to us in truth, how much a part of us is every mind, how faithful they have really been to us, and how our Father's Love contains them all.
Restoration of the Temple Before the separation the mind was invulnerable to fear, because fear did not exist. Both the separation and the fear are miscreations of the mind, which must be undone. This is what is meant by “the restoration of the temple.” 2Chronicles 24:27 It does not mean the restoration of the building, but the opening of the altar to receive the Atonement. This heals the separation, and places within man the one defense against all separation mind-errors which can make him perfectly invulnerable. |
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