Jesus explains to us in this lesson that if sin were indeed real, punishment would be called for and our salvation would require that we suffer for what we have done. I watched an Easter parade somewhere in South America where they were walking without shirts on and beating each other on the back, drawing blood as part of their penance, believing that by this act of Atonement, they were demonstrating their love for Jesus and their willingness to suffer on behalf of what they believe he went through.  Yet here Jesus says, "Who would seek out such savage punishment?" (W.101.4.1) Would we ever want to turn to a God who smiled approvingly on such self-sacrifice? Why do we insist on accepting self-flagellation that we undertake when we crucify ourselves? No, we don't draw blood in physically beating on ourselves, but we do believe that we must be punished for what we have done wrong. When judge ourselves harshly for our perceived 'sins' and we crucify ourselves and others, the ego seems to smile approvingly on such self-punishment.
 

It is a belief that we hold Atonement can only come by satisfying God's need for vengeance. This is not the God we learn about in this course. This is the god of the ego. When we listen to the voice of the ego, it tells us that we deserve punishment for what we have done in leaving God and stealing His treasure, just like the Prodigal Son was said to have done. We have established our own individuality on God's demise. Thus, we believe that Oneness has been destroyed at God's expense. The ego has convinced us that we have sinned and now we are guilty, and all who walk this world, believe this. Sin and guilt always call for punishment. Through punishment, we think we are atoning for sin and thus making it all good with God. Our salvation from this perspective must be purchased. We have to pay a dear price in suffering, pain and ultimately death. "The sinful warrant only death and pain, and it is this they ask for.   For they know it waits for them, and it will seek them out and find them somewhere, sometime, in some form that evens the account they owe to God." (W.101.2.4-5)
 

To see this clearly, we need to look at our lives. Can you see how our lives are centered on so many experiences of pain and suffering, including as much avoidance of pain and suffering as possible? That is the case for all of us. It is our fear of God's punishment that made up the world. We made up this world and the self that we identify with in order to hide from God and avoid His punishment. Thus, the world of separation is where we hide from His love because we fear that, in the experience of His love, we will be annihilated. Now we punish ourselves, seeing ourselves as limited and lacking instead, hoping that in the end we will have atoned for our sin. Jesus says that God does not want this for us. He wants us to release our fears and our self-attacks by looking at them with him and recognizing that we have been mistaken and done nothing to deserve punishment.

It is important to understand the metaphysics of the course because otherwise our ego insanity will never get exposed. Without this teaching, our lives here as bodies and personalities, seemingly living in the world,  appear to be very real and solid to us.  We do our best to live with the pain and suffering and celebrate our periods of respite. In the end, we hope that we have been good enough and that God will punish all those bad people out there, but not us, since we have adequately punished ourselves.  We make efforts to be as good as we can be, atoning all the time for our mistakes. Regardless of how much we try, we can't evade the end, which is death. The ego story of our being safe in the body and in the world is entirely bogus. Why would we not run from God, if death is our salvation and the assumed bringer of peace at last? How could we love a God who wills our death, especially if it is a redeeming death full of pain and suffering? Isn't that what we are afraid of? Aren't we afraid that we have to suffer to atone for what we have done wrong? We are called to look at this part of ourselves that believes in the value of suffering.

"If sin is real, salvation must be pain." (W.101.3.1) Jesus says, "It is essential that error be not confused with sin, and it is this distinction that makes salvation possible. For error can be corrected, and the wrong made right. But sin, were it possible, would be irreversible." (T.19.II.1.1-3) "Sin calls for punishment as error for correction, and the belief that punishment is correction is clearly insane." (T.19.II.1.6) Sin says that I have done something terrible, and now God is justified in punishing me, so I can make up to Him by my suffering.
 

If you are wondering if this is true for you, some of the ways that it is expressed in our daily lives is the feeling that this is too good to last, or, if we were too happy, we would become afraid that the  other shoe would drop.  My friend, Chuck Spezzano, who developed "Psychology of Vision" based on the course, used to say in his sessions, "how good can you stand it?" Often we don't allow the good into our lives. We sabotage ourselves. We stop ourselves from feeling "too happy."  Or we may feel guilty if we were happy and someone in our lives were suffering. We feel obligated to join them in their misery and we call this empathy.

True empathy does not mean joining with someone in their suffering. To do so is the ego's version of empathy. The Holy Spirit would teach us that suffering is not understandable and asks us not to try to join in pain. We don't lighten it by sharing the delusion of suffering. "The ego always empathizes to weaken and to weaken is always to attack."  To empathize from a place of strength is to "merely sit quietly by and let the Holy Spirit relate through you." (T.16.I.2.7) In other words we really don't know how to help or heal anyone. The only healer is the Holy Spirit. When we get out of the way, He shines through us and we will always be doing the loving thing under His guidance and not our own. When we see someone suffer, we are seeing wrongly. We are then called to heal our own misperception of who they are as a body. We are called to look beyond appearances.
 

We think that happiness cannot be a constant state. We believe in suffering. When I worked in juvenile detention, I saw young people mutilate their bodies. They would tell me that pain was the only thing that made them feel like they were alive. They were so cut off from any kind of joy and were actively choosing pain in order to feel something---anything. And in many ways we do the same thing. We mess it up if it gets too good because we get scared. And we all have some form of this self-inflicted pain because we believe we deserve punishment. And death is just further proof of God's vengeance on us for what we have done. "An angry father pursues his guilty son. Kill or be killed, for here alone is choice. Beyond this there is none for what was done cannot be done without. The stain of blood can never be removed and anyone who bears this stain on him must meet with death." (M.17.7)
 

Aren't we afraid, if there were no sin that "people would get away with murder?"  We are afraid that, without guilt, people will do whatever they want with no consequences. There will be no control. We have a strong investment in sin and punishment. There is no question that, within the illusion, controls are necessary. There are consequences for breaking the law, but this course is not about behavior. It is about healing our mistaken notions of God. It is to heal our fear of God, which is the final obstacle to peace. Jesus assures us constantly that God is only love. He is our refuge. Why would we be attracted to salvation, if it required pain and suffering from us? Jesus keeps reminding us that "God's will for me is perfect happiness."  He does not want pain for us. We will know that that is the case, when we accept our innocence. It has always been there. We have not changed ourselves with our ideas of sin. "Accept Atonement with an open mind, which cherishes no lingering belief that you have made a devil of God's Son." (W.101.5.3) Let go of the idea of sin and guilt, and recognize that mistakes can all be corrected. All of our misperceptions of who we are are mistaken notions that we can now bring to the truth.
 

We are being asked today to look at how much we cherish sin in ourselves and others. Whether we blame ourselves or others, it is the same because, if we blame our brothers, it is just our self-blame and our guilt, projected out. Forgiveness corrects our belief that sickness and suffering are the answer to buying our innocence. Jesus clearly wants us to question this deeply held belief. Today we recognize that as we forgive others, it is our road back to forgiveness of God. We recognize that seeking happiness at the expense of our brother only brings more guilt. Healing requires that we see our interests as the same as our brothers'.  We share the same need for healing our minds. When we see the sameness, it is a reflection of the oneness of Heaven.

Today in our meditation practice we go deep into the mind where we connect with the joy and happiness that are constant in us. The ego does not need to be punished and attacked in order to subdue it. Simply be willing to look at it. To resist it just strengthens the ego and makes it real, but when we connect to joy and peace the ego has no defense against it. And we do that by looking at our thoughts and bringing our false beliefs to the light of truth.

Knowing that God only wants happiness for me strengthens my willingness to continue on this path. I find that my determination grows each time I apply this practice of forgiveness. When we have hurt or attacked someone, we don't have to go through a long period of remorse. Yes, we may deeply regret our actions, but instead of crucifying ourselves, we can recognize our mistake and bring our misperceptions to the Holy Spirit. That is what God wills for us. That is the choice that we can make. "There is no sin; it has no consequence." (W.101.6.7) Jesus did not die for our sins. He only demonstrated that he could not die and neither can we.

Love and blessings, Sarah

⁹ Atonement is for all, because it is the way to undo the belief that anything is for you alone. To forgive is to overlook. Look, then, beyond error, and do not let your perception rest upon it, for you will believe what your perception holds. Accept as true only what your brother is if you would know yourself. Perceive what he is not, and you cannot know what you are because you see him falsely. Remember always that your identity is shared and that sharing is its reality.

 

¹⁰ You have a part to play in the Atonement, but the plan of the Atonement is beyond you. You do not know how to overlook errors, or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to think either that you do not make them or that you can correct them without a Guide to correction. And if you do not follow this Guide, your errors will not be corrected. The plan is not yours because of your limited ideas of what you are. This limitation is where all errors arise. The way to undo them, therefore, is not of you but for you.

 

¹¹ The Atonement is a lesson in sharing which is given you because you have forgotten how to do it. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of what is your natural ability. By reinterpreting the ability to attack, which you did make, into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created. If you would accomplish this through Him, you cannot look on your abilities through the eyes of the ego or you will judge them as it does. All their harmfulness lies in its judgment. All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit.

 

¹² The ego, too, has a plan of forgiveness because you are asking for one, though not of the right teacher. The ego's plan, of course, makes no sense and will not work. By following it, you will merely place yourself in an impossible situation to which the ego always leads you. The ego's plan is to have you see error clearly first and then overlook it. Yet how can you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you have made it real and cannot overlook it.

 

¹³ This is where the ego is forced to appeal to "mysteries" and begins to insist that you must accept the meaningless to save yourself. Many have tried to do this in my name, forgetting that my words make perfect sense because they come from God. They are as sensible now as they ever were because they speak of ideas which are eternal. Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear. Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it.

 

¹⁴ Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your minds at all, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit, the effects of error are totally non-existent. By steadily and consistently canceling out all its effects everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it. Follow His teaching in forgiveness then, because forgiveness is His function, and He knows how to fulfill it perfectly. That is what we meant when we once said that miracles are natural, and when they do not occur, something has gone wrong.

 

¹⁵ Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow the Holy Spirit's plan of salvation in recognition of the fact that you do not know what it is. His work is not your function, and unless you accept this, you cannot learn what your function is. The confusion of functions is so typical of the ego that you should be quite familiar with it by now. The ego believes that all functions belong to it, even though it has no idea what they are. This is more than mere confusion. It is a particularly dangerous combination of grandiosity and confusion which makes it likely that the ego will attack anyone and anything for no reason at all. This is exactly what the ego does. It is totally unpredictable in its responses because it has no idea of what it perceives.

 

¹⁶ If one has no idea of what is happening, how appropriately can you expect him to react? You might still ask yourself, regardless of how you can account for the reactions, whether they place the ego in a very sound position as the guide for yours. It seems absurd to have to emphasize repeatedly that the ego's qualifications as a guide are singularly unfortunate and that it is a remarkably poor choice as a teacher of salvation. Yet this question, ridiculous as it seems, is really the crucial issue in the whole separation fantasy. Anyone who elects a totally insane guide must be totally insane himself.

 

¹⁷ It is not true that you do not know the guide is insane. You know it because I know it, and you have judged it by the same standard as I have. The ego literally lives on borrowed time, and its days are numbered. Do not fear the Last Judgment, but welcome it and do not wait, for the ego's time is borrowed from your eternity. This is the Second Coming, which was made for you as the First was created. The Second Coming is merely the return of sense. Can this possibly be fearful? 

 

¹⁸ What can be fearful but fantasy, and no one turns to fantasy unless he despairs of finding satisfaction in reality. Yet it is certain that he will never find satisfaction in fantasy, so that his only hope is to change his mind about reality. Only if the decision that reality is fearful is wrong can God be right. And I assure you that God is right. Be glad, then, that you have been wrong, but this was only because you did not know who you were. Had you remembered, you could no more have been wrong than God can. The impossible can happen only in fantasy. When you search for reality in fantasies, you will not find it. The symbols of fantasy are of the ego, and of these you will find many. But do not look for meaning in them. They have no more meaning than the fantasies into which they are woven.

 

¹⁹ Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful, pretty or ugly, but no one calls them true. Children may believe them, and so for a while the tales are true for them. Yet when reality dawns, the fantasies are gone. Reality has not gone in the meanwhile. The Second Coming is the awareness of reality, not its return. Behold, my children, reality is here. It belongs to you and me and God and is perfectly satisfying to all of us. Only this awareness heals because it is the awareness of truth.