 1 Atonement and Miracles I am in charge of the process of atonement, which I undertook to begin. When you offer a miracle to any of my brothers, you do it to yourself and me. The reason you come before me is that I do not need miracles for my own atonement, but I stand at the end in case you fail temporarily. My part in the atonement is the cancelling out of all errors that you could not otherwise correct. When you have been restored to the recognition of your original state, you naturally become part of the atonement yourself. As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it. Listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. The power to work miracles belongs to you. I will provide the opportunities to do them, but you must be ready and willing. Doing them will bring conviction in the abilities because conviction comes through accomplishment. The ability is the potential. The achievement is its expression, and the atonement, which is the natural profession of the children of God, is the purpose. Heaven and earth shall pass away means that they will not continue to exist as separate states. My word, which is the resurrection and the life, shall not pass away because life is eternal. You are the work of God, and His work is wholly lovable and wholly loving. This is how a man must think of himself in his heart, because this is what he is. The forgiven are the means of the atonement. Being filled with spirit, they forgive in return. Those who are released must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the plan of atonement. Miracles are the way in which minds that serve the Holy Spirit unite with me for the salvation or release of all of God's creations. I am the only one who can perform miracles indiscriminately, because I am the atonement. You have a role in the atonement, which I will dictate to you. Ask me which miracles you should perform. This spares you needless effort, because you will be acting under direct communication. The impersonal nature of the miracle is an essential ingredient, because it enables me to direct its application. And under my guidance, miracles lead to the highly personal experience of revelation. A guy does not control, but he does direct, leading it up to you to follow. Lead us not into temptation means recognize your errors and choose to abandon them by following my guidance. Error cannot really threaten truth, which can always withstand it. Only the error is actually vulnerable. You are free to establish your kingdom where you see fit, but the right choice is inevitable if you remember this. Spirit is in a state of grace forever. Your reality is only spirit. Therefore, you are in a state of grace forever. Atonement undoes all errors in disrespect and thus uproots the source of fear. Whenever you experience God's reassurances as threat, it is always because you are defending misplaced or misdirected loyalty. When you project this to others, you imprison them, but only to the extent to which you reinforce errors they have already made. This makes them vulnerable to the distortions of others, since their own perception of themselves is distorted. The miracle worker can only bless them, and this undoes their distortions and frees them from prison. You respond to what you perceive and as you perceive social you behave. The golden rule asks you to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This means that the perception of both must be accurate. The golden rule is the rule for appropriate behavior. You cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive correctly. Since you and your neighbor are equal members of one family, as you perceive both, so you will do to both. You should look out from the perception of your own holiness to the holiness of others. Miracles arise from a mind that is ready for them. By being united, this mind goes out to everyone, even without the awareness of the miracle worker himself. The impersonal nature of miracles is because the Atonement itself is one, uniting all creations with its Creator. As an expression of what you truly are, the miracle places the mind in a state of grace. The mind then naturally welcomes the host within and the stranger without. When you bring in the stranger, he becomes your brother. That the miracle may have effects on your brothers that you may not recognize is not your concern. The miracle will always bless you. Miracles you are not as to perform have not lost their value. They are still expressions of your own state of grace. But the action aspect of the miracle should be controlled by me because of my complete awareness of the whole plan. The impersonal nature of miracle-mindedness ensures your grace, but only I am in a position to know where they can be bestowed. Miracles are selective only in the sense that they are directed towards those who can use them for themselves. Since this makes it inevitable that they will extend them to others, a strong chain of Atonement is welded. However, this selectivity takes no account of the magnitude of the miracle itself, because the concept of size exists on a plane that is itself unreal. Since the miracle aims at restoring the awareness of reality, it would not be useful if it were bound by laws that govern the error it aims to correct. And from the workbook of A Course in Miracles. Lesson number two. I have given everything I see in this room, on this street, from this window, in this place, all the meaning that it has for me. The exercises with this idea are the same as those for the first one. Begin with the things that are near you, and apply the idea to whatever your glance rests on. Then increase the range outward. Turn your head so that you include whatever is on either side. If possible, turn around and apply the idea to what is behind you. Remain as indiscriminate as possible in selecting subjects for its application. Do not concentrate on anything in particular. And do not attempt to include everything you see in a given area, or you will introduce strain. Merely glance easily and fairly quickly around you, trying to avoid selection by size, brightness, color, material, or relative importance to you. Take the objects simply as you see them. Try to apply the exercise with equal ease to a body or a button, a fly or a floor, an arm or an apple. The sole criterion for applying the idea to anything is merely that your eyes have lighted on it. Make no attempt to include anything particular, but be sure that nothing is specifically excluded. I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me. This beautiful lesson is a reminder that all meaning emanates from consciousness, and consciousness is the domain of the ego. So all meaning that is perceived in the world of time and space, the linear cosmos, is a projection of fiction, false meaning, false concepts, false beliefs. This is how the world of linear time and space seems to arise. It comes from these concepts of the self that God did not create. These concepts have taken on a seeming reality in this world. And all apparent meaning is in consciousness and seems to be projected out to the dream world. So this lesson begins to show the part that the mind plays in assigning meaning to the meaningless, in giving meaning to the images. This image-making capacity is the ego, assigning meaning to all images. We could even call them idol images, and generating a veil that covers over the light of truth and the light of God. In the Bible we were told, have no graven images before the Lord thy God, and yes this wasn't talking about totem poles or golden calves. This is talking about the entire egoic process of generating meaning where there is none, and making a false perception to cover the face of Christ, to cover our very identity. So gently as you move through the day, see the importance of this lesson. I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me. It brings the responsibility for sight back to the mind and reverses the idea that the world tells me who I am. The world tells me what to do. This crazy idea that the world dictates my state of mind because this external form of causation is completely false. There's nothing in time that makes me who I am. Only linear time could construct an illusion that would tempt me to deny my true self as the Christ.