ACIM Chapter 14. IV. Your Function in the Atonement P 2, 3
Photo by John Gardiner of Whangarei, New Zealand
IV. Your Function in the Atonement
2. You who belong to the First Cause, created by Him like unto Himself and part of Him, are more than merely guiltless. ²The state of guiltlessness is only the condition in which what is not there has been removed from the disordered mind that thought it was. ³This state, and only this, must you attain, with God beside you. ⁴For until you do, you will still think that you are separate from Him. ⁵You can perhaps feel His Presence next to you, but cannot know that you are one with Him. ⁶This cannot be taught. ⁷Learning applies only to the condition in which it happens of itself.
3. When you have let all that obscured the truth in your most holy mind be undone for you, and therefore stand in grace before your Father, He will give Himself to you as He has always done. ²Giving Himself is all He knows, and so it is all knowledge. ³For what He knows not cannot be, and therefore cannot be given. ⁴Ask not to be forgiven, for this has already been accomplished. ⁵Ask, rather, to learn how to forgive, and to restore what always was to your unforgiving mind. ⁶Atonement becomes real and visible to those who use it. ⁷On earth this is your only function, and you must learn that it is all you want to learn. ⁸You will feel guilty till you learn this. ⁹For in the end, whatever form it takes, your guilt arises from your failure to fulfill your function in God’s Mind with all of yours. ¹⁰Can you escape this guilt by failing to fulfill your function here?
We just finished a long section helping us accept our guiltlessness.
But the truth is, we cannot be guilty because God did not give us guilt. We are simply learning to let go of the idea of guilt itself having any meaning. All meaning is of God, and He did not give meaning to guilt; therefore, it does not exist. Jesus tells us that we are more than merely guiltless, but we will not know this until we let go of the idea of guilt. Then we will know ourselves as one with God.
I cannot comprehend this Oneness, but that’s okay. Right now, my attention is on the many ways I still feel or assign guilt, and that’s where it needs to be. I don’t do this alone. Jesus says that God is beside us as we do the work, and when it is done, we will know we are not separate. We don’t learn to be one with God, but learning that we are innocent is what makes knowing possible.
In paragraph three, Jesus clarifies this process for us when he says we will let go of what is obscuring the truth as we let it be undone for us. It is undone for us. That is what I often remind myself of when I am trying to somehow get rid of an unhelpful thought. My only part is to sincerely desire to be free of it. The undoing itself is not mine to do. That is so important to remember. Otherwise, the ego uses our desire for freedom to keep us imprisoned, offering useless, complicated advice and strategies until we give up in confusion. Holy Spirit, decide for me. That’s my way out. A relief in its simplicity.
Jesus also tells us, ⁴Ask not to be forgiven, for this has already been accomplished.
Instead, we are asked to learn how to forgive. This is what restores our mind. I will not know that I am forgiven if I fail to forgive because unforgiveness proves the need for forgiveness, and what I apply to another, I will apply to myself. I can become confused about forgiveness, but if I just bring my attention back to my part, it clarifies for me. Today, I wrote about a forgiveness lesson I had on Facebook this morning when contemplating Lesson 23.
I knew forgiveness was needed, but at first, I was blinded by attack thoughts. As it turns out, that was all that needed to be forgiven; the attack thoughts. Not me or the other person, as we are already forgiven. Just the attack thoughts. Forgiveness freed my mind and brought me to the peace I longed for. It also brought me closer to God. This is how I learn guiltlessness through forgiveness and to prepare my mind for Oneness.
And there’s more.
He also tells us in paragraph three that ⁶Atonement becomes real and visible to those who use it. And that this is our only function here. It is accomplished through forgiveness, and until we learn it, we will continue to suffer. This is so simple, and yet I can still struggle with it. I get caught up in the story and forget my purpose.
Something said or done seems awful, and I’m off and running, trying to fix the world, which is only a projection of my own mind. How silly can I get? It is like I smudged my lipstick and keep wiping the mirror to fix it. The problem is not the world. It is that which makes the world what it seems. It is our attack thoughts. So the next time I feel burdened by the world, I am going to look away from that mirror and ask for correction of those thoughts.
⁸You will feel guilty till you learn this.
Sometimes when I look at my mind, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I had a situation in which an error on my part seemed to have caused a real problem with my non-profit. I worried about it for months. In my attempt to flee from the guilt I felt, I tried to rewrite the story in my mind in such a way that I appeared less guilty. That didn’t help, so I thought of various others who should bear responsibility, but that didn’t work either. My mind was all over the place, trying to find peace from the guilt. Finally, in desperation, I tried forgiveness.
Yes, I know. I could have done that to begin with, but here we are. I asked the Holy Spirit to decide for me how I should think of this. Not surprisingly, the guilt dissolved. That was His answer. Of course it was, and I was able to accept it. Then, with a clearer mind, I realized that I had done all I could to remedy the situation, and now it was time to give it to God. I did so without telling Him how I wanted the story to end. I did have a strong opinion about that, but I laid it aside and trusted God. Not to ruin the story for you, but it all worked out.
There was real value here.
The real value of that protracted situation was that it gave me ample time to try everything the ego suggested so that I could see what doesn’t work. It gave me time to forgive many ideas in my mind. It was a very uncomfortable but profitable period of time, and I am so grateful for it. I saw how the real cause of guilt “arises from your failure to fulfill your function in God’s Mind with all of yours.” I see that I cannot avoid guilt by looking outside myself for answers. It is my function here to forgive guilt in all its forms. I forgive all past failures to do so, and I am making forgiveness my plan going forward.