Our theme for this morning's talk is Atonement. Atonement is another of those central concepts
in A Course in Miracles and is also one that is frequently misunderstood. Let us start
with one of the key misunderstanding of Atonement; it is not to be read "At-one-ment." That's
a typical New Age term, which is not what the Course means by Atonement. In the Course's
context, "At-one-ment" would be our state in Heaven; our reality as spirit; our reality
as Christ being the one Son that God created one with Him. We are at one with our Source.
All right, Atonement in the Course is what undoes the belief that we have separated from
our Source, therefore, thereby releasing our mind to being what it always was, which is
at one with God. In the Course Atonement can be best defined as correction. It is the Holy
Spirit's correction for the ego's misbelief that the separation from God has actually
occurred. We're told in the Course that the ego speaks first, is always wrong, and the
Holy Spirit is the Answer. So the ego speaking first is proclaiming itself God's son now
separated and on its own, existing on its own, and then again, that belief is the ego.
The answer to that is the memory of our oneness as Christ that we took with us into the dream
when we first began to sleep and dream of separation and that memory is what the Course
really means by the Holy Spirit, and the heart of the Holy Spirit is this Atonement principle.
If we are still linked through this memory with our reality as spirit, if we are still
connected with the Love of God and our identity as Christ, then we cannot be separate from
it. So that this memory of who we are as Christ is the Atonement; it's the thought that says
this, once again, the separation from God never occurred. So once we redefine the problem
as the mind's belief in the ego and redefine the solution as being the mind's belief in
the Holy Spirit by accepting the Atonement, we are ready to understand this very, very
important principle in the Course that is first annunciated in Chapter 2 but then is
repeated all the way through, that the sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to
accept the Atonement for himself. This idea of accepting the Atonement is really our one
function. In Heaven our function is to create simply by being an extension of God's Love.
In this world our function is to forgive or to heal or to accept the Atonement; all different
ways of expressing the same thought. Acceptance of the Atonement, actually in the Course is
really seen as the consummation of the process of forgiveness. It is the consummation of
the process of continually choosing miracles instead of grievances. It is the ultimate
healing. It is the ultimate recognition that everything the ego taught us is false and
everything the Holy Spirit or Jesus has taught us is true. So the Atonement is simply the
Correction. It is the undoing of the mind's belief that the ego spoke truth, namely that
the separation has occurred. It is looking at the ego and quoting the lines to ourself
from the Course where Jesus says that we should resign as our own teacher for we have been
badly taught. It is in essence firing the ego as our teacher and choosing Jesus or the
Holy Spirit as our Teacher, and when we choose them we are choosing to accept the Atonement.
What this means in our everyday life by accepting the Atonement, which is that the separation
never happened, is I correct all of my misperceptions that you, whoever the "you" is; the object
of my special love or the object of my special hate, you are not the source of my discomfort.
You are not the source of my dis-ease. You are not the source of my lack of peace. You
are not the source of my feeling the absence of God's Love. If all these are my experience
it could only be because I chose against the Love of God. I chose to have the ego be my
teacher and its thought system of separation and attack be my salvation, and I've chosen
to look at Jesus and his message of forgiveness and basically say, "Get lost; this is not
what I want. I want to preserve my individual self and my identity, and because of that
there is no place in my mind for the Atonement. There is no place in my mind for forgiveness
and there's no place, Jesus, in my mind for you." This, of course, this just reinforces
our guilt from the original thought that we told God, "There's no place in my mind for
You either." So that we apply the principle of the Atonement; we choose to continually
practice our daily lessons of accepting the Atonement by recognizing that I am not separate
from anyone that I heretofore had seen as outside of me. That indeed we are not separate
even though we are separate in forms and in the level of the body. We are separate only
separate in form but we are not separate on the level of the mind. On the level of the
mind we are all the same: one ego, one Holy Spirit, one decision maker. And it's in recognizing
the universal sameness of all of God's seemingly separated Sons that we come to practice the
acceptance of the Atonement until that one glorious day when we recognize once and for
all that the Holy Spirit has spoken only truth and the ego has spoken only lies. In that
moment we have accepted the Atonement, the ego's dream is undone, we are in the real
world, and then God reaches down and lifts us back unto Himself.