ACIM The Atonement as Defense, P 5, 6. The Atonement was built into the space-time belief to set a limit on the need for the belief itself, and ultimately to make learning complete.
ACIM The Atonement as Defense, P 5, 6
II. The Atonement as Defense, P 5
5 The Atonement was built into the space-time belief to set a limit on the need for the belief itself, and ultimately to make learning complete. The Atonement is the final lesson. Learning itself, like the classrooms in which it occurs, is temporary. The ability to learn has no value when change is no longer necessary. The eternally creative have nothing to learn. You can learn to improve your perceptions, and can become a better and better learner. This will bring you 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 is a belief in differences is learning meaningful.
There is my reality. I am part of the Sonship with no needs of any kind. There is no time and space for me, no need for the Atonement or lessons. Because I am eternally creative, there is nothing for me to learn. I do not perceive because I know. I am perfect, so there is nothing to improve upon.
What I Am/ What I Think I Am
On the other hand, there is the substitute experience I chose. I see myself as a body living in space and time. I pretend that I cannot remember my reality and don’t know who I am. So, I have convinced myself that I am separate from God and have scared myself with this thought. I believe I have shattered reality into endless pieces and that I am now one of those tiny pieces and have nothing to do with all the rest. I believe that I am a fragile body among billions of bodies, alone and helpless and forever desperately grasping for all that I have lost.
The substitute experience is not real, and there is a place in my mind that knows the truth, but I have buried it deep in shadows of illusion so I can continue this pretense. This is the self that I know best at this time, this little self of limitations, the self I have most closely identified with. But I have begun to shake off the long sleep and have begun to awaken to my true nature. I am accepting the Atonement for myself. This is my final lesson! This is your final lesson, too.
I do this by questioning the mind’s thoughts and allowing the Voice of God to guide me out of the darkness of my mind. A Course in Miracles is the instruction book, its words a pathway out of the illusion. The Holy Spirit is my Guide, my Comforter, and my Healer. As the light of truth dissolves the darkness of illusions in my mind, I allow that light to shine into my brother’s mind and show them the truth that is there.
Shifting My Perception
It is through the Atonement that I slowly shift my perceptions and bring them more closely into alignment with truth. I made the world as a playground for experience, and things got severely out of hand. It became a prison in which the Son of God seems to be trapped by his fear and guilt. The Holy Spirit has another use for it, though. It is now being used as a classroom where my little self can learn lessons and allow the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking and bring my perceptions closer and closer to reality.
What a strange thing this is. The perfect have seemingly made themselves imperfect and then forgotten that they did this to themselves. Now they appear to be frightened and guilty creatures, helpless and unable to remember any other state. But all that is changing. First, we pretend we need help. Then we pretend to learn lessons to finally return our awareness to our natural state of wholeness and perfection in which there is nothing to learn.
I have had some extraordinary shifts. I was thinking about the passages from A Course in Miracles that have been most influential in those shifts. One would be from Lesson 190, which says: If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real, there is no God. I decided to believe this, to practice this, and then to experience it. I have watched in amazement as I experienced the physical manifestations of this healing of my mind.
More Shifts; More Understanding
The second passage that triggered a significant shift in my understanding said: There is nothing outside your mind. T18 VI Beyond the Body. Jesus says the same thing in other ways throughout the Course, but for some reason, when I heard those words, I suddenly believed them, and everything changed. Now, no matter what I am experiencing, physical or emotional, whether it is a challenge with finances, relationships, or the body, I recognize that it is occurring in my mind and nowhere else. Therefore healing must occur in my mind.
I am not the victim of the world was another idea that changed my world. It helped to convince me further that it is only my thoughts and beliefs that cause my world. Now, I never believe that something outside my own mind can affect me. Only my thoughts do that.
And Another
And then, there is this one.
The peace of God is everything I want. ³The peace of God is my one goal; the aim of all my living here, the end I seek, my purpose and my function and my life, while I abide where I am not at home. (ACIM, W-205.1:2-3)
This passage, along with my deep commitment to it, shifted me in a significant way. There are many more.
How about you? Has there been a particular passage or idea from the Course that has greatly influenced your life this year?
6 II. The Atonement as Defense, P 6
6 Evolution is a process in which you seem to proceed from one degree to the next. You correct your previous missteps by stepping forward. This process is actually incomprehensible in temporal terms, because you return as you go forward. The Atonement is the device by which you can free yourself from the past as you go ahead. It undoes your past errors, thus making it unnecessary for you to keep retracing your steps without advancing to your return. In this sense the Atonement saves time, but like the miracle it serves, does not abolish it. As long as there is need for Atonement, there is need for time. But the Atonement as a completed plan has a unique relationship to time. Until the Atonement is complete, its various phases will proceed in time, but the whole Atonement stands at time’s end. At that point the bridge of return has been built.
Jeez, when I first read this, my head was spinning as I tried to make sense of it. Clearly, I see that I return as I go forward. As I do a lesson and something happens, I fully accept it, and my mind is healed of a belief. Then I read something from the Course, and the same thing happens again. I forgive what I have believed, and something else has been undone. It seems that I am cautiously taking tiny steps, and then more confident strides are made. I definitely feel like I am moving forward. But really, I am returning.
Looking Down on My Life
The Atonement frees me from my past errors, so I don’t have to keep repeating them over and over again. If I were looking down on my past life, I would see many circular paths. These would be the places where I retraced my steps as I kept making the same mistakes over and over again.
The form of the error looks different at times, but the error itself is the same mistaken belief being projected onto the world. For instance, I think I am a victim, and this is projected as money I was depending on being lost. Another time it is being cheated by a contractor, and another time as being molested. The same belief in victimhood is projected in different forms.
Later in life, the path has fewer of these circular places. The remaining circles are smaller, some just curves, and lately, the path is much straighter. The difference is that I have learned to forgive and let go, and my mind is healed. The Atonement principle has gone into effect in my life, and the past forgiven is the past undone. No need to return there. This is how time is saved.
Another way this happens is when I am just minding my own business, and suddenly, I am upset about something that happened years ago. I went back in time to discover this unforgiven situation. Now it is in the present, and here I can accept the Atonement for it. I keep doing that until there are no more unforgiven past memories, and I am free.
Then I Got Confused
The last part was a bit more confusing. The Atonement is part of time for as long as time lasts. It saves time, making chunks of it unnecessary, but it does not abolish time. I understand that part pretty well. It is like miracles, which are useful here where we think we are, but once we return our minds to God and remember who we are, we will have no use for miracles. The same thing is true of the Atonement.
However, the next part is not entirely clear to me. It says that the Atonement also stands at the end of time. It is the bridge that we use to return home. Maybe as the Atonement is being used in time, it is building the bridge, and so at the end is the Atonement that is the bridge home. Maybe he means that the Atonement undoes whatever we could not undo, and thus is our bridge home. What do you think?
I don’t know that I need to understand. The important thing to me is that the Atonement, which is forgiveness, or as Jesus says, undoing, is the way I am healed and the way time is saved. This undoes the past and takes me forward on the path home at a good clip, with fewer side trips. And as I go forward, I return to where I never left.
See, nothing to it!
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