IX. THE CLOUD OF GUILT, P 4
4 Atonement brings a re-evaluation of everything you cherish, for it is the means by which the Holy Spirit can separate the false and the true, which you have accepted into your mind without distinction. Therefore you cannot value one without the other, and guilt has become as true for you as innocence. You do not believe the Son of God is guiltless because you see the past, and see him not. When you condemn a brother you are saying, “I who was guilty choose to remain so.” You have denied his freedom, and by so doing you have denied the witness unto yours. You could as easily have freed him from the past, and lifted from his mind the cloud of guilt that binds him to it. And in his freedom would have been your own.
Journal
Students often ask me to help them understand what Jesus means by Atonement. I always think of Atonement as undoing, and I think that Atonement and forgiveness are the same thing. I like this explanation even better:
Atonement brings a re-evaluation of everything you cherish, for it is the means by which the Holy Spirit can separate the false and the true…
This is why I bring my thoughts to the Holy Spirit for interpretation. I want Him to separate the false from the true because I cannot do that. As Jesus goes onto say, I have accepted everything without distinction. I have a thought and I tend to believe it, simply because it was in my mind. Actually, I have taught myself not to automatically accept every thought, but I used to do so, and still do so sometimes.
Here is an example. I awoke in the night recently, and lay there worrying about someone dear to me. He is going through a very difficult time and making some hard decisions. I started thinking about all that could go wrong and what those consequences would mean to him. I started feeling so anxious that I knew I couldn’t go to sleep like this. I wanted to be peaceful and sleep through the night. I wanted to stop being afraid for this person.
The reason I was finding it so hard to stop being afraid and to return to peace is that I had automatically accepted my thoughts about the situation as being true; he could make bad decisions and he could suffer dire consequences. What I did was listen to the Rules for Decision section of the Course. Afterwards, I realized that the only thing that happened is that I asked the ego what the situation meant and I joined with the ego in deciding what would happen based on the ego’s interpretation.
I did the steps that Jesus laid out for me to undo that decision and make way for the Holy Spirit to re-interpret for me. He helped me by sorting through the thoughts, rejecting what is not true. What I was left with were some true thoughts that restored my mind to the peace of God that I so wanted. A true thought in my mind was that I must have faith in my brother.
Another was that nothing was happening anywhere except in my mind, which was projecting my fears into a non existing future. The next morning I was guided to this passage: “Your patience with your brother is your patience with yourself. Is not a child of God worth patience?”
All the other thoughts were gone. I wasn’t thinking about all the ways his life could go wrong now, or how unlikely it was that he would succeed. I wasn’t thinking about how this would affect my life, and other lives. I was happy and at peace.
Jesus says the result of not distinguishing between thoughts and simply accepting them all is that guilt has become as true for us as innocence. To free my mind, I had to free this dear person I love. I had to let go of the thoughts that he was guilty of anything and embrace his innocence. I had to let go of the belief in guilt and embrace only the belief in innocence.
Will he make mistakes and will there be dire consequences? I don’t know. But no matter where his lessons take him, I have faith now that all will be as it should be and that he will be successful however it appears in the story. He is guilty of nothing; what happens here is meaningless of itself, and gains meaning only according to our desires. I desire to know only innocence, his and mine. I will be vigilant for thoughts about this situation and ask the Holy Spirit to sort them out for me from now on.
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