It is possible to experience peace in this world, a facsimile of what we will know when we remember again that what we are in truth is not separate from what God is. The means of peace is forgiveness: the sharing of our perception with the Holy Spirit, that it might be directed toward Heaven rather than the ego’s self-serving hell.
Lesson 193 of A Course in Miracles is a clear and explicit statement of this principle: there is nothing in this world that cannot serve the purpose of salvation if we will simply share it with the Holy Spirit and Jesus. Given to the Teacher who knows the way Home, all things facilitate that longed-for return.
However abstract or unrealistic or even complicated this idea might seem, it is in reality quite simple: the only lesson that we really need to learn is “forgive and you will see this differently” (W-pI.193.3:7).
The form of the lessons changes constantly, but its content – the healing power of forgiveness – never does. Thus, we might be forgiving a spouse for being impatient or angry. Then we might be forgiving the President of the United States for advancing a policy with which we disagree. Then we might be forgiving the neighbor’s dog who barks too loud. Then the homeless guy outside our office. Then the rain. Then daylight savings. Then chocolate . . .
How do we know that these things – and myriad others need to be forgiven in the mode of A Course in Miracles? By the degree to which we still experience pain – if we are upset or angry or wracked with need or sad or grieving, then it is certain that we have not yet fully shared with the Holy Spirit.
Don’t let this become yet another source of guilt! Jesus and the Holy Spirit are models of truly infinite patience. They merely await our willingness, healing as much as we are able to share with them, and then quietly resting while we summon the willingness to offer yet more seeming strife and anguish. It’s not a crime to take this by degrees.
But when we are ready to be free of suffering – and to know the peace that surpasses understanding – we can begin to approach our lives with the earnest diligence of the student who is ready – like really ready – to graduate.
Let mercy come to your more quickly. Do not try to hold it off another day, another minute or another instant. Time was made for this. Use it today for what its purpose is. Morning and night, devote what time you can to serving its proper aim, and do not let t time be less than meets your deepest need (W-pI.193.10:2-6).
Our deepest need is to end the seeming separation and return to God. Nothing will satisfy us – nothing – but to restore to our memory the Source of our Creation and to know ourselves again as what we are in Truth.
The way to do this is to see in each form that presents itself – in work, in family, in friends, in the news, in our reading, our dog walks, our seeming idle thoughts, our dreams, our longings, our memories – as yet another opportunity to forgive and thus see differently.
God would not have you suffer thus. He would help you forgive yourself. His Son does not remember who he is. And God would have him not forget His Love, and all the gifts His Love brings with it (W-pI.193.8:1-4).
Joy is a daily thing – and peace is sure when we refuse to cling to the ego, the frail and malicious self, that seeks to replace God and control all things. Let go. Let the Holy Spirit teach you how to see the forest, how to see the other drivers, how to see children and cats, and sunsets and cheesecakes.
The purpose of our existence is merely to practice forgiveness that we might remember we are wrong about what we are and thus deeply confused about our true existence. We are given a Teacher who can lead us home as surely as a river finds the sea. In this lesson, Jesus urges us to avail ourselves of that Guide – and to give salvation as much of our willingness as we possibly we can.
From time to time I find myself needing to revisit certain core ideas in A Course in Miracles. Such is the case with Atonement – which is simply the Holy Spirit’s plan end the illusion of separation. In what way is the course breaking with traditional Christianity and establishing some new theological ground? How should we understand – and bring into application – this essential concept?
First things first. Atonement is based on the verb “to atone,” which in English was most likely modeled on the Latin verb “adunare,” which means “to unite.” In the Latin, it is a combination of “ad” (which means “to” or “at”) and “unum” (which means one). To atone is to make reparations for a prior wrongdoing and as a result to be restored to an original state of union.
In a great deal of Christian theology, atonement was (and is, in many cases) presented as the reconciliation of God with all human beings as a result of the sacrificial death of Jesus. As Saint Paul noted, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (I Corinthians 15:3).
In other words, human beings – having grievously sinned by separating from God (and compounding that sin daily) – were obliged to make amends with God if they ever hoped to see the shinier sides of the Gates of Heaven. Jesus, through his suffering and death at Golgotha, covered this for all humanity.
This narrative of redemption through blood sacrifice has its antecedents in the Old Testament. The gospel writers were not ignorant of tradition! In Leviticus, for example, God orders Israel to set aside one day a year to be “the day of atonement” (Leviticus 23:27-28). On that day, people were to sacrifice an innocent animal in order to atone for their sins. The shedding of the animal’s blood “was brought in to make atonement” (Leviticus 16:27).
For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul (Leviticus 17:11).
Centuries later, Jesus would become the symbol of the lamb – sacrificed so that through the spilling of his blood we might all atone and return to our original state of union with God.
Interestingly, it was Mary Baker Eddy who popularized a somewhat different take on atonement – shades of which can clearly be seen in A Course in Miracles. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Eddy wrote that the principle of atonement was the principle of oneness with God.
ATONEMENT is the exemplification of man’s unity with God, whereby man reflects divine Truth, Life, and Love. Jesus of Nazareth taught and demonstrated man’s oneness with the Father, and for this we owe him endless homage (18).
In A Course in Miracles, Atonement is the Holy Spirit’s corrective plan that undoes the ego. The Plan of Atonement came into existence after the belief in separation emerged. Its guiding principle is that the separation never happened and we remember this – and share it with others – through forgiveness (T-1.III.3:1). It explicitly rejects sacrifice of any kind (T-3.I.1:2).
This is the real insight of ACIM and in the text, Jesus insists that we not overlook it. We are asked to forever break the ties between suffering and atonement. The former is a symptom of the belief in separation; the latter is simply joyful. The crucifixion, by which our salvation was seemingly wrought, is merely an “extreme teaching example,” that serves to remind us what we are in truth is not bound by form and cannot be killed.
Fear is what keeps atonement at bay – not our unwillingness to repent, not the magnitude of our alleged sins, not the egregiousness of our errors. Just fear. We are scared of love, scared of God, scared of each other and scared of being scared. Crucifixion – that horrifying blend of torture and execution – long served as the symbol of our deep-rooted fear. In A Course in Miracles, we are urged to let that go.
God does not believe in retribution. His Mind does not create that way. He does not hold your “evil” deeds against you. Is it likely he would hold them against me (T-3.I.2:4-7).
Sacrifice – the idea that we must giving something up in order to get something else – is altogether foreign to God who neither thinks nor creates that way (T-3.I.4:1). When we begin to see this – and to accept it – the fear associated with torture and death (reflecting, of course, the “sacrifice” that Jesus allegedly made on our behalf) begins to dissipate. We begin to see that salvation, properly understood, is actually enlightening – that is, we are literally lightening our load by releasing unnecessary blocks and baggage and simultaneously allowing light into the interior landscape darkened by fear.
That releasing and allowing for light is really a metaphor for forgiveness, which in terms of A Course in Miracles simply means looking at our specialness – at what facilitates our seeming separation from God – with Jesus or the Holy Spirit. It is the willingness to gently allow for the possibility that our habitual modes of thinking and understanding are not functional and that another way is both possible and necessary.
When we invite the Holy Spirit (if you prefer your spiritual companions to be abstract) or Jesus (if you prefer them to be quite specific) we are trying to see beyond what separates us – bodies, jobs, attitudes, income tax brackets, houses, cultures. We are trying to go beyond finding fault in the externals and instead accepting its origins as internal.
Thus, when we “atone” in A Course in Miracles we are not really forgiving people for being troublesome or mean or selfish or violent. We are really forgiving ourselves for the belief that we are separated from God. The external wrongdoings are projections that reflect our own interior horror show. Forgiveness is the means by which we see the illusion for what it is, and thus let it go, and perceive instead the Love that lies beyond it.
Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world. It lets you recognize the Son of God, and clears your memory of all dead thoughts so that remembrance of your Father can arise across the threshold of your mind (W-pI.122.3:1-2).
Forgiveness is personal. Though our demons and devils arises from the same error (the belief that it is possible to separate from God and that we did separate from God), they assume forms and modes that are unique to us. They show up in the world of separation, which is the world of variability and change. This is why I often say A Course in Miracles meets us where we are: it doesn’t matter what your problems are or how you prefer to talk about them or how you conceive of solutions.
Atonement is not contingent on form – it will assume whatever form is most helpful at a given time and place. In truth, the atonement is perfect love (T-2.VI.7:8) which always adapts itself to circumstance, forever taking the language and structure that is most suited to the shared experience of those extending and receiving it (T-2.IV.5:1-3).
We undertake Atonement in here in the world because it is “the natural profession of the children of God” (T-1.III.1:10). And Jesus assures us that once we accept the gig, we aren’t going to hurt for material.
You have a role in the Atonement which I will dictate to you. Ask me which miracles you should perform (T-1.III.4:2-3).
I was a lucky kid growing up in the Catholic church because a lot of my teachers – priests, parents, catechism leaders and later professors and monks and nuns – tended to dwell on how much God loved me. Even Jesus’ death on the cross was presented as a loving gesture. He would suffer and die for me – who else was willing to do that?
Yet that message of love was often in conflict with the imagery and language that was presented in other settings. I would sit in the pews and look at the crucifix – this poor broken and bloody body and think, man, I would never have asked him to do that for me. Nobody should have to suffer like that. What kind of God are we talking about here?
It is not really possible to talk about a God of Love – or say God is Love – while simultaneously preaching that only the shedding of blood through torture and execution can lead one to that God. In the end, it is a message torn between perfect love and perfect horror.
A Course in Miracles neatly resolves that. It is not everybody’s spiritual path, nor should it be, but it is a pretty consistent and elegant one. Atonement is natural and effortless. We ask Jesus and the Holy Spirit to help us practice forgiveness. No more than that is required. Our willingness to practice – and our faith that our learning is in better hands than ours – is what finally allows us to see the folly of self-reliance.
You always choose between your weakness and the strength of Christ in you . . . In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, ‘My brother, choose again.’ He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom god created altar unto joy (T-31.VIII.2:3, 3:2-5).
In every moment Christ calls and urges us to choose again: to choose with Christ rather than against Christ. Will we do it? Atonement is nothing more than our quiet answer “yes.”
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In a deep way – a psychological way – we believe we are victims of the world we see, the ones who populate it, and the God who made it all. We are wracked by fear and guilt and thus driven by hate. I know how unpleasant that sounds, but A Course in Miracles will not make any sense – and cannot really be helpful – until we accept this.
Even when we are happy – because it is sweet to listen to leaves falling in Autumn or because we just baked a lovely pie or because our grandkids are over and the sound of their laughter is just this side of Heaven – we are in our hearts truly miserable.
This unhappiness – which is fear-based – is the profound fact of our lives in the world and it is sustained by our desire – our insistence, really – that it not be healed or undone. We want to be unhappy. And that means we are invested in death because whoever hears only the ego hears only the promise of death. Dress it up however you like – we are talking about being followers not of Christ but of a rotting and horrifying corpse.
No one but must regard the body as himself, without which he would die, and yet within which is his death equally inevitable. It is not given to the ego’s disciples to realize that they have dedicated themselves to death (T-19.IV.B.i.16:5, 17:1).
This idea was very stressful to me for a long time, because I believed in an ideal of spiritual wellness and spiritually healthy people did not walk around confessing to hatred and anguish, guilt and fear. They did not believe in death; death was an illusion because the body wasn’t real. You know the ACIM drill.
I could talk the walk just fine but I was not actually walking it. And it is the walk that heals us.
Thus, we reach a point in our ACIM practice where we see that it is not working. We may be a bit more balanced, a bit more patient, a bit less judgmental but we are not really experiencing the unalterable joy of knowing God as our Creator and our identity as Creation Itself. And that – that joy, that peace – is what we really want. Before that gift, a so-called better life on the world’s terms is not a gift but a curse.
This is an ACIM crossroads of sorts. A lot of students remain here. They are moderately happy. Life is better than it was before the they studied A Course in Miracles. And it’s understandable! When you scrape yourself off the floor, life on your knees looks pretty good. Settling makes a certain kind of sense.
But we are called to something brighter and finer than the ego’s compromises. And sooner or later we are going to get around to trying to find it. First we blame the course. Then we blame our fellow students. Then we blame the teachers teaching us the course.
And then we get around to looking at ourselves.
In the ACIM text, Jesus gently observes that when we pronounce A Course in Miracles confusing and impossible to apply, we would do well to consider the possibility that we have not yet done all that it asks (T-11.VIII.5:2). The Holy Spirit can only take us so far as we are willing to go.
The Holy Spirit offers you release from every problem that you think you have . . . You who believe it is safe to give but some mistakes to be corrected while you keep the others to yourself, remember this: Justice is total (T-26.II.2:1, 5:1).
Our unwillingness to be broken – to cherish some aspects of brokenness – precludes healing. Thus, what we keep to ourselves remains unhealed. And healing is not partial – it is total or it does not occur at all.
It is when we accept this – the unconditional nature of love – that healing begins in earnest. We begin to see down into the depths of us – we reach those places where language will not go, the material that does not yield to form but is instead the seething mass from which forms of hate and lovelessness arise. This is truly horrifying! This is the ego’s last gasp and best argument. And yet only by looking at it, can we be liberated from it. And indeed, it is when we are willing to look at it that we learn at last that A) we are not alone and B) what we are looking at is not such a big deal.
We begin to learn that we are not separated from God, and that the only problem we have is our willingness to believe in problems.
You made the problem God has answered. Ask yourself, therefore, but one simple question:
Do I want the problem or do I want the answer?
Decide for the answer and you will have it, for you will see it as it is, and it is yours already (T-11.VIII.4:4-7).
Dwelling in the ego’s gruesome bedrock is not necessary. We aren’t asked to wallow in guilt or to set up camp in that ontological horror show. We are simply asked to give some attention with the Holy Spirit to what happens when we turn within and consider the fear, guilt and hate that is encountered there.
So long as you are confident that Holy Spirit is looking with you, keep looking. Go deeper. When you start to feel shaky, stop. It’s okay.
That is the work: the refusal to be a victim of what is external but, as importantly, to refuse to be a victim of what is internal. We escape from both together (W-pI.31.2:5). We are going to peer into every last corner in which the ego hides and works its dark magic. The Holy Spirit is our lantern. And I promise you: no shadow can stand against it.
We all make an ego for ourselves – a self, an identity – and, critically, we also make one for every other person that we perceive (T-4.II.2:1). This is important! It’s not just our self that we’re fogging with bad ideas and guilty thoughts, but everyone else too. It’s not an ideal approach to inner peace – not for us and not for our brothers and sisters.
It is helpful sometimes to make contact with this fact: to sit quietly with a cup of tea and look closely at the egos we have made for others. This person is attractive. That person “gets us.” This person is mean, that one is generous. She makes too much money while he is too self-righteous. Irish people drink too much and Germans are too efficient. Buddhists are peaceful, Catholics are repressed. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
We all do it and we all do it for the same reason: we want something. We are raging oceans of emptiness and darkness and want other people to fix it. We want them to love us, comfort us, feed us, entertain us, console us. We assign roles – lover, parent, friend, soul mate, student, teacher – and expect everyone to dance accordingly. When they do, we think we’re happy because we’re getting what we want. When they don’t, we are poor victims of unjust external forces. Either way the ego wins.
This is the root of conflict. It’s not money and it’s not sex. It is the false self we believe we are that creates false selves for every other being we perceive.
So what do we do? We need to see the total futility of ego-based thinking. When we do, we will reach the point that Bill Thetford reached: we will declare that there must be another way.
Belief that there is another way of perceiving is the loftiest idea of which ego thinking is capable. That is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is not the Self (T-4.II.4:10-11).
That point is a sort of surrender. It reflects the shred of willingness that is all the Holy Spirit needs to begin to teach us “the other way.” We begin to perceive our brothers and sisters without bringing our own needs and wants into it. It’s not that our needs and wants aren’t there – they are and they will be so long as we believe we are bodies in the world – but that they are no longer as powerful. They float up and we know they aren’t the only game in town. So their stranglehold on us loosens.
It is an incredible gift to look at a person and leave – or will to leave – your predetermined sense of them behind. It liberates them. It validates them at the level of spirit. And it releases us a little as well, because only spirit can perceive spirit. So when we make this effort to put aside the egos we make for everybody, we are also putting aside our own ego.
This is the practice of right-mindedness which leads naturally to right perception – a critical step in our awakening journey. Right perception is the ground from which on the One-mindedness of the Holy Spirit springs (T-4.II.10:1-2).
The ego cannot survive without judgment, and is laid aside accordingly. The mind then has only one direction in which it can move (T-4.II.10:3-4).
Often, when I am interacting with others, I make a point of giving attention to the ego I make for them. As importantly, I make a point of remembering that they have made one for me. It reminds me to breathe and relax. We are all sort of fumbling through this self-imposed darkness. The best I can do is rein in, as much as possible, my own projections. Really, what else is there to do?
Beginnings matter. Beginning again matters. This is the promise of A Course in Miracles: that at any moment we might begin again. It doesn’t matter what kind of student we were yesterday or an hour ago. What matters is our willingness in this moment to accept the Holy Spirit’s judgment of Life.
In a sense, that is all the course does for us: renders us capable of making better decision within the complete and utter hash we make of our lives. It teaches us that we are not mistaken when we long for a better way, and then it gives us very practical steps by which to experience that better way.
You will undertake a journey because you are not at home in this world. And you will search for your home whether you realize it or not. If you believe it is outside you the search will be futile, for you will be seeking it where it is not. You do not remember how to look within for you do not believe your home is there. Yet the Holy Spirit remembers it for you, and He will guide you to your home because that is His mission (T-12.IV.5:1-5).
Is it hard to be a follower? I wonder sometimes. When we insist that we know the way or that Truth is outside of us – in a relationship, in a job, in social status, in a cultural identity – we are not really followers. Or we are the ego’s followers.
Following Jesus or the Holy Spirit is simpler than following the ego. Following the egoic self – no matter how smooth and cool and proficient we are – is always a bit like the proverbial bull in a china shop.
When my kids were little and we went places, they always took my hand. Have you held a child’s hand? It is very natural. They sort of reach for you and your hand opens to meet theirs. Their trust is complete, as if your guidance were perfect. They rest safely in the field of your attention. It is a form of Love, of giving and receiving simultaneously, in one fluid motion.
That is what following the Holy Spirit is like. There is nothing intellectual about it. It’s not a negotiation – I’ll go with you this far but then I get to walk in front for a few yards. It is an utter surrender to the safety of Love. We don’t trust that yet or we would have done it lifetimes ago but that’s okay. We are learning.
As [the Holy Spirit] fulfills His mission He will teach you yours, for your mission is the same as His. By guiding your brothers home you are but following Him (T-12.IV.5:6-7).
Again, this is not hard! We make it hard, but it’s not. We are forming a sort of daisy chain, each of us reaching out to the other with one hand as the other is enveloped in the Infinite. And together we step through the illusory world to our true home in Christ, in Heaven.
It is not a hard journey because there is nowhere to go. We are already Home – we already have everything for which we long because we are everything.
Your inheritance can neither be bought nor sold. There can be no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole and all His extensions are like Him (T-12.IV.6:7-8).
Our awareness of oneness – the journey that goes nowhere because there is no place to go – happens in an instant. It is a moment in which we allow the remembrance of Christ to dawn in our minds. “Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have been redeemed” (T-12.IV.7:5).
That is what it means to begin again – to be born again: in any moment we might choose to see that we are redeemed, that salvation is already accomplished. And that recognition is facilitated by accepting the sure guidance of the Holy Spirit: not in abject surrender but joyous surrender: we are taking the hand of the one who knows the way Home.
I have been thinking a great deal lately about forgiveness with a lowercase f. I mean the ordinary – the traditional – experience of forgiveness. Of accepting apologies, letting grudges go, and moving on with our brothers and sisters.
That is a different understanding of forgiveness than that espoused by A Course in Miracles (which is why I distinguish it with a lowercase f). In terms of the course, forgiveness is a way of seeing, or a shift in perception, by which we see our brothers and sisters not as enemies but as friends (e.g., T-17.9:1-3).
In that sense, forgiveness essentially undoes our specialness – our uniqueness – by allowing us to perceive everyone equally (e.g., T-25.IX.8:1). Since we cannot really do this on our own, we turn to Jesus and the Holy Spirit to help us, adopting their sight in place of our own (e.g., T-5.I.3:1-2, T-5.II.11:1).
Thus, as students of A Course in Miracles, we do not take note of the so-called wrongs other people do to us, then agree to overlook them because we are following a spiritual path, have evolved to a higher understanding of love, and so forth. Doing that just makes the error real (e.g., T-30.VI.4:1). And the course emphasizes that what we actually are cannot hurt or wronged or injured (T-in.2:2-3). To believe otherwise is literally what it means to be separated, and it inevitably forces our brothers and sisters into separation-based thinking and experience as well.
That’s well and good – better than well and good, actually – but how are we to handle the fact that we aren’t always in that space? What do we do when we believe that we have been treated unfairly or poorly? That we have been wronged?
In this world – in these bodies – that is going to happen from time to time, even to those of us who are maybe starting to feel consistently peaceful and happy, and for whom applying ACIM principles is our default mode of behavior.
I think in those situations, forgiveness with a lowercase “f” – just accepting that bad stuff happens, people screw up, including us from time to time, and so why not just let it go – isn’t a bad policy.
That is, we can just enact basic, traditional forgiveness with the understanding that A Course in Miracles proposes another way that we have yet to fully and functionally embrace.
And that is okay, so long as it reminds us to remain committed to our ACIM practice.
Really, what I am saying here, is that even traditional forgiveness – ordinary forgiveness – can be a form of love.
“I forgive you.” We don’t even have to say it out loud. We don’t have to make a big production out of it. But we can let our hearts enter that space of forgiveness as love. It’s okay; it’s more than okay.
It is particular loving and helpful when we can yoke it to the metaphysics behind A Course in Miracles. That is, we can have a forgiving heart here in the world while remembering that there is another way to understand the experience.
If we do that, sooner or later, we are going to be enable to enact that experience – forgiveness with a capital F, if you will.
More and more one appreciates the importance of kindness in ones practice. It is a kind of service unto our brothers and sisters, and the world that together we bring forth. When we are kind, our mind is less boxed in by the ego. There is more room to remember that what we actually are is formless and cannot be injured or harmed.
This, in turn, undoes our sense of vulnerability, and the accompanying need to defend oneself. It testifies to the truth of “nothing real can be threatened” (T-in.2:2).
Forgiveness in the world isn’t going to bring us to Heaven, to that pre-separation state of formlessness and love. But there can be a gentleness to it, a lovingkindness. It is a way of saying to our brothers and sisters, “we are in this together and I don’t want to get hung up on the little things. I don’t want to forget you or forsake you.”
Really, this is just about being nice! It sounds so simple but it’s hard. If you look around, you can see this. People are scared and stressed and sad. They are impatient and overwhelmed. I am too. It happens.
The question is: what can we do about it?
Well, we can be nice. In ordinary, common sense ways, we can be helpful and gentle and kind. Why not? It opens a little space in which we can remember – and maybe even share – that this world is not our home.
