Accepting the Atonement for Yourself – Talk 2: Segment 1

San Francisco Miracles Conference, February 2007

(A beautiful song of praise follows from the gatherers at the event.)

That's the goal, to be happy. How do we forget that the only goal in

life is to be perfectly happy? Sometimes when we're growing up

people will say things like, "Well, the airplane went down and God's

Will was for that plane to go down." And as we're children we

think, "That's nasty." But to know God's Will to be perfect

happiness we realize we need to forgive. We need to open our mind to

that perfect remembrance of God's eternal, eternal love. That is

what this is all about.

The topic for today is the one I talked about the other day, which is

Accepting the Atonement for Yourself. In fact in A Course in

Miracles, Jesus says it two different times in two different ways,

that the sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the

Atonement for himself. The sole responsibility of the teacher of God

is to accept the Atonement for himself. When you think about that it

means that out of everything that you possibly could conceive of

being your goal and your purpose, Jesus makes it really straight when

he says "sole responsibility." he means only. And when Jesus says

only He certainly doesn't mean one among many. That is what we're

going to talk about today.

What a great session this morning with Gary Reynard. I have to say

it was a beautiful launch into this time we're going to have together

today. What you heard this morning was beautiful metaphysics from

ACIM, that really are clear. And as Gary says, the metaphysics

themselves aren't that important. Whether or not you can spout the

metaphysics and be eloquent, that isn't really that important. But

to have a grasp of them is really important for the practical

application of them. Because if you don't have the metaphysics

clear, then even if you are applying them correctly, if you're

applying a misunderstanding, then you just get more confusion.

That's not what this Course is about. I just want to thank Holy

Spirit, Jesus, and Gary Reynard for that great presentation this

morning. Not only clear metaphysics of A Course in Miracles but also

lots of humor and examples. When you put the combination of all

those together, you just have to be very grateful, because it saves

times. That presentation is one that collapsed a lot of time for the

whole universe. It was so clear, crystal clear.

Sometimes people ask me about feeling anxious and afraid in their

mind and when they are feeling off and don't know where they are off,

or just feel like dark clouds rolled in and don't know where they

came from. They were having a happy day and all of the sudden clouds

just rolled in and the happy day went out the window. But, as the

Course teaches, I am responsible for what I see. I choose the

feelings I experience and I decide the goal I would achieve. And

everything that seems to happen to me, I ask for and receive as I

have asked. That's pretty tight, airtight. That is breaking away

from victimization. It is really a tight picture that Jesus is

painting, which is good. You want to get to a point where you can

claim Christ control of your mind instead of ego control. You

reclaim your inheritance, and that means to think with Christ and to

think with God.

I would say that if you had to boil all the seeming errors that

students make down into just two categories to try and simplify

things, the first category would be metaphysical errors where people

read the Course and work with the Course, sometimes even for many

years, but because of the ego resistance they really don't want to

understand what Jesus is really teaching. Because if you begin to

open up to what He is teaching, the ego is out of business. So of

course the mind that is feeding off of and identifying with the ego

is going to try and do everything it can not to wake up. Some of you

have had the experience when you read the Course and you read a line

and say, "What was that? What did I just read?" Eyeballs move over

the words but the ego is saying "No way. You're not going to get

that one today. No, No, No. You're not going to do that."

That's why it is so important to be clear of the metaphysics that

Gary was talking about today. It seems like you are here. You're

really at home in Heaven but you are dreaming of exile. And the

dream seems very real. Like the analogy he used, where the child is

told by the parent, `It is okay, you made this up, and you forgot

that you made it up.' Those metaphysics are just important starting

points. I would continue on by saying that the second category that

A Course in Miracles students fall into that gives one the most

difficulty is transfer of training errors. That is where you are

working with the Workbook and you are practicing with the lessons and

the ego wants to make exceptions to whatever it is.

Okay, you're doing lesson 48, "There is nothing to fear." Then you

think, "I've got that mortgage payment due on Friday, how much money

is in my bank account, uh oh, how much money is in my bank account?"

You start to realize that you do have fears coming up, you have to

look at what they are, and that is where the metaphysics can help you

out.

When I would work with people, I would just say, when you get in a

real bind, whenever you start to feel afraid or jealous or angry or

envious, or just raging, it is good to have some of those workbook

lessons in mind to help pop you out of it.

I call it 5, 6, 7 and 8.

5 I am never upset for the reason I think.

6 I'm upset because I see something that is not there.

7 I see only the past.

8 My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.

When you put those together in kind of a cause and effect kind of

relationship, you say, "Oh, I'm upset because my mind is preoccupied

with past thoughts. I'm living in the past and still rehashing this

instant of terror, this unholy instant when the separation seemed to

occur." I'm just replaying it here and the ego is projecting out a

nice scenario so I can point the finger and go, "Oh, I'm upset

because it is too cold in my house, the furnace went off, or I'm so

upset because I just got fired, or I'm just upset because somebody

cut me off on the highway or my wife told me she was leaving me."

Those kinds of things seem very real in this world. But that is why

we need 5, 6, 7 and 8 over and over to release the mind from this

false cause and effect relationship, as if the world is doing it to

you and you are at the world's mercy. It seems as if you are at the

mercy of the dream and you're not.

Now let us use this time to work on transfer of training because that

is the second major area. You start doing the Course and Jesus says,

okay, we'll start off with lesson 1, "Nothing I see means anything".

Let your eyes move around the room and glance on all the familiar

objects, this chair does not mean anything, this couch does not mean

anything… When people get to a certain point (maybe when they are

looking around and they have pictures of mother and father, or

pictures of son and daughter) they say, okay, we'll skip over that

one. Okay, this lamp does not mean anything… That's an exception.

You just made an exception. Jesus says let your eyes move fairly

evenly across the room and remember, whatever your eyes land on, it

does not mean anything. He is using it as a practice to undo the

specialness of thinking there are certain images in this world that

are much more important than others

People say: "I can forgive my roaches; I can forgive this chair, but

my MOTHER? Do you know what she did to me and how many years, I

can`t forgive my mother." But that is what we are talking about - the

transfer of training.

There was a great story I heard years ago from Ken Wapnick. He went

to visit these nuns. He went to this church and entered the

sanctuary area and the nuns were all studying A Course in Miracles.

They had invited him to come and talk to them about metaphysics.

Basically they were practicing lesson 1, letting their eyes move

across the sanctuary - these pews do not mean anything, this stained

glass window does not mean anything - and they got to the point where

they came to the Eucharist. They said, of course we'll skip that.

We can't say that about the body of Christ. But actually Jesus says

that in the Course. Jesus says that I can't share my body with you,

I can share my mind. Jesus would actually say that seeing the

meaninglessness of the body is a good practical application of His

Course. Do it with the Eucharist too. But when you've been raised

with a system that sees that body as sacred, it takes undoing of the

belief that there is anything sacred in form. Your mind is sacred.

Your Being-ness is sacred. Everything in form is part of the

forgiveness lesson. You can see it that way.

Gary Renard touched on the mind this morning and I would like to

focus on it today. The mind, in the full awareness of the Atonement,

knows that the separation never happened. The full awareness of the

Atonement is that the separation never happened. I have traveled

more miles than you can even imagine. I've been doing it for 16

years and always hear the same questions, "How did the impossible

occur?" "To whom did the impossible occur?" I call them the top

questions. How did this happen in the first place? How could

perfection, how could God, ever make a mistake? Or how could Christ,

who is a perfect Being, ever make a mistake? And basically, it is a

statement. When you ask the questions, "How did the impossible

occur?" or "How did this happen in the first place?" there is an

assumption underneath the questions. And what is that assumption?

That it happened! Of course the ego likes that assumption. Then it

can ask all kind of questions including how this happened.

It is like you are on a wild goose chase to find the right theology,

the right teacher, the right technique, the right mantra. Oh my

gosh, the guilt at trying to solve that question. But the very

assumption is something we have to learn to release. There will be

no theology that will come along to get you out of this. There isn't

going to be a concept. There will be an experience that will come

that will end your doubting. In the Course that experience is the

Atonement. The Atonement is full awareness that the separation never

happened. In this respect, A Course in Miracles is a launching pad.

You are on a launching pad where you are ready to take off in a

rocket and get up in orbit where you have no sense of gravity. You

are happy and free. A Course in Miracles is a book that is just

designed to help you get up into orbit, into Being-ness, into your

perfection.

One of the errors I'll talk about today, one of the metaphysical

errors, is spiritualizing matter. When you try to take anything in

form and make it special or spiritual, this is the error. For

example, you've heard "go to India and bathe in the Ganges, it is a

sacred river." Or you may have heard that the oil that Mary

Magdalene put on Jesus' feet is the sacred oil. How much does it

cost now? I want some of that oil that was on Jesus' feet. Or it

seems to play out with food and drink. Drink from the sacred water.

We know from Catholicism you get baptized with holy water - it isn't

just tap water, it has to be holy water. The water is supposed to be

blessed by a priest to make it holy. These would all be

spiritualizing matter errors, or trying to make something sacred in

form when only your mind is sacred. The ego wants you to believe

that there are certain things that are sacred in form so then you

won't forget them. You will cling to them, you will ritualize them.

You will hang on, hang on, and hang on. That is an example of

spiritualizing matter. That is one common mistake.

Another error results if you start to see anything in form or in the

script as being causative, since images are really unreal effects of

an unreal cause. The images of the world are unreal effects. And the

unreal cause is the ego. The Course teaches that God didn't create

this world, God creates the eternal. God creates in Spirit. You

know we are all familiar with the phrases in the Bible, "Hold no

graven images before the Lord thy God." I always thought about

golden calves and stuff like that. Jesus is saying the image is of

the cosmos, the graven images are like a veil drawn over the face of

Christ to cover the Light.

to be continued...