The Atonement is Within You

           God, being All, must include the idea of Its Own opposite. But being All, God cannot have an opposite. So, the idea of not-God is simultaneously undone as it arises. It is impossible.

But, as the idea of not-God includes time, within the idea of not-God, but not in God, it seems as if the idea began long ago and will be undone in come indefinite future. The experience of time is what we call consciousness or existence. It is the experience of being a person in a body in a world.

As an expression of that moment of the idea of not-God arising and being undone, consciousness is always split between the idea of not-God and its undoing, or ego and Spirit. This ongoing and inevitable undoing is what A Course in Miracles calls the Atonement.

As an individual expression of consciousness, your mind in consciousness is split between ego and Spirit and expresses the Atonement at one stage or another, at any given moment, as well as throughout its expression in time. As it expresses an idea simultaneously undone, the Atonement is always (now) and ongoing in consciousness. If your mind expresses not-God, it will inevitably be corrected, if not in your mind, somewhere, sometime in consciousness.

The Atonement is expressed through individual minds as personal growth and maturation and, as it advances, awareness of God’s Reality in some form all the way up to Spirit-consciousness, the manifestation of the undoing aspect in the Atonement.

Because in time the Atonement manifests as a process, its material expression is the final effect and least significant aspect of it. Because consciousness is a timebound, fragmented collective, rather than the Timeless Unity of Truth (God), there is often a lag time in the Atonement’s material expression, as all aspect of it must be “coordinated.” For example, your awareness of Spirit may result in you realizing that you must leave an unhealthy situation in your material life a while before your doing so manifests in your material life. This is because what occurs in your mind does not occur in isolation and affects the whole. Using the example, your leaving the unhealthy situation affects more than you alone.

So, as the final and often lagging effect, the Atonement’s material expression is the least significant aspect of it and should never be looked toward for the Atonement. The actual Atonement is found within, in Spirit. Spirit is the manifestation of the simultaneous undoing in the Atonement in the form of Teacher and Guide through time, until one perhaps realizes Spirit-consciousness.

Spirit-consciousness is the awareness of the Reality of Timeless Unity beyond time/consciousness/the Atonement, which is observed as the impossible (illusory) passing idea it is. So, the Atonement is seen as never having been necessary (forgiveness), even as a mind in Spirit-consciousness continues to participate in it as a manifestation of undoing.

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