ARCIM

Daily Lesson 139 ~
May 19

I will accept Atonement for myself.

Here is the end of choice. For here we come to a decision to accept ourselves as the Divine created us. What would there be to choose between if we were certain of what we are? Every doubt is rooted here. Every question merely reflects this one. Every conflict entails the single simple question: “What am I?”

Yet who could ask this question except one who has become unable in themself to recognize themself as they truly are? Only rejection of the Gift of who you truly are could make the question seem to be real. The only thing that can be surely known by any being is what it is. From this one point of Certainty it perceives other beings as certain as itself.

Uncertainty about what and who you are must be self-delusion on a scale so vast its magnitude can hardly be conceived. To be and yet not to know who you are is to believe that your existence is merely an illusion. For what are Being and Life except to be yourself and know yourself through your being? And who could have existence as yourself instead of you and ask this question of yourself? Who is the doubter? What is it they doubt? Whom do they question? Who can answer them?

These questions merely state that a person believes they are not themself and therefore, being something else, they become a questioner of what that something is. Yet they could never be at all unless they knew the Answer. This Answer – Divine Essence – was given in form of an answer for all time in response to the first question ever asked. All questions that have been asked since or can ever be asked are merely variations of this same question: “What am I?” Therefore all questions show that the Answer has not yet been received by the mind still in doubt.

Yet because the mind still in doubt, in spite of its doubt, has being and lives, and always will, this means that in its creation it did receive and accept the being that it eternally is. So in a dream of madness it must have judged against its being and denied its Worth, and decided that it does not in fact know the only Certainty by which it has being and lives. Thus a person becomes uncertain of their life, for what it is and means have been denied by them. It is because of this denial that Atonement is needed and is here.

Your denial of yourself made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the Truth. 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 this questioner part of you, uncertainty would be impossible.

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 that the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true? 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 and yet again until the time Atonement is accepted, and they learn it is impossible to doubt yourself, or not to be aware of what you are. Only acceptance can be asked of you, for what you are is certain. It is set forever in the holy Mind of the Divine 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 don’t know what you cannot fail to know.

Is this a question or a statement that 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 remember the Goal that we accepted as our purpose here. It is more than just our happiness alone we came to find. What we accept as what we are proclaims what everyone must be along with us.

Fail not your sisters and brothers or you fail yourself. Perceive them lovingly that they may know that they are part of you and you of them. This does Atonement teach. This demonstrates that the Oneness of the Divine’s Children is unassailed by their beliefs that they know not what they are.

Today accept Atonement, not to change the world, but merely to accept the Truth about yourself, and go your way rejoicing in the endless Love of the Divine. It is simply this that we are asked to do. It is only this that we will do today.

Five minutes in the morning and again at night we will devote to dedicate our minds to our assignment for today. We start with this review of what our Mission is:

 

“I will accept Atonement for myself, for I remain as the Divine created me.”

 

We have not really lost the Knowledge that the Divine gave to us when It created us like Itself. We can remember It for everyone, for in Creation are all minds as One, and in our mind is the Memory of how dear our sisters and 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 Creator’s Love contains us all.

In thanks for all our sisters and brothers, in the Name of our Creator and our Oneness with all Aspects of Creation, we repeat our dedication to our Cause today each hour, as we lay aside all thoughts that would distract us from our holy Aim. For several minutes each hour let your mind be cleared of all the foolish cobwebs that the world would weave around the holy Child of the Divine. And learn the fragile nature of these cobwebs appearing as chains that seem to keep the Knowledge of yourself apart from your awareness, as you say:

 

“I will accept Atonement for myself, for I remain as the Divine created me.”

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 11: The Dissolution of the Ego

 

9. The Real World

The world as you look upon it cannot have been created by the Creator, for the world is not as you look upon it. The Divine created only the Eternal, and everything you look upon is temporal and perishable. Therefore, there must be another world that you do not yet perceive. The closing of the Bible speaks of a new Heaven and a new Earth, yet this cannot be literally true, for what is Eternal is not re-created. To perceive anew is merely to perceive again, implying that previously you were not truly perceiving at all. What, then, is the world that awaits your perception when you see the world?

Every loving Thought that the Children of the Divine ever had is eternal. These Thoughts that their minds conceive in this world are the world’s only reality. These are still experienced as perceptions, because those thinking Them still believe that they are separate, yet They are eternal, because They are loving. And being loving, They are like the Creator, and therefore cannot die.

The Real World can actually be perceived. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive only this and nothing else. For if you perceive both good and evil, then you are accepting both the True and the false in your mind, and therefore making no distinction between them. The ego aspect of your mind perceives some good, but never only good. That is why its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject Goodness entirely, for this you could not accept, but it always adds something that is not real to the Real, thus confusing illusion and Reality. For conceptions and their resulting perceptions cannot be partly true. They are either entirely true or entirely false. If you believe in both Truth and illusions, then you won’t be able to tell which is true or false.

To establish your personal autonomy, you tried to create unlike your Creator, believing what you made to be capable of being unlike It. Yet everything in what you have made that is true is like It. Only this is the Real World, and conceiving and perceiving only this will lead you to the Realm of Heaven because It will make you capable of understanding It. The perception of Goodness is not Knowledge, but the denial of the reality of the opposite of Goodness – the denial of the reality of the “bad” or imperfect – enables you to perceive a Condition in which opposites do not exist. And this is the Condition of Knowledge. Without this awareness you have not met Its Condition, and until you do you will not know that It is yours already.

You have made many ideas that you have placed between yourself and your Creator, and these beliefs are the world of illusions as you perceive it. Truth is not absent here, but It is obscure. You do not yet know the difference between what you have made and what the Divine created, and so you do not know the difference between what you have made and what you have created. To believe that you can perceive the Real World is to believe that you can know yourself. You can know the Divine, because it is Its Will to be known. The Real World is all the Worthy that the Holy Spirit has saved for you out of what you have made, and to perceive only this is awakening, because it is the Recognition that Reality is only what is true.

This Course is very simple. Perhaps you do not feel that mastering a course is necessary that, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only Reality is true. But do you believe that only Reality is true? When you have perceived the Real World, you will recognize that you did not believe before that only Reality is true. But the swiftness with which your new and only real perception will be translated into Knowledge will give you only an Instant to realize that this experience is true. And then everything you ever made will be forgotten—the good as well as the imperfect, the beautiful as well as the not yet beautiful. For as Heaven and Earth become One, even the Real World will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not its destruction but its Translation into Heaven. The Reinterpretation of the world is the transfer of all perception to Knowledge.