September 25, 2009
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All Or Nothing
Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world, because it is the source of a wholly unified perception. Partial Atonement is a meaningless idea, just as special areas of hell in Heaven are inconceivable. Accept Atonement and you are healed. Atonement is the Word of God. Accept His Word and what remains to make sickness possible? Accept His Word and every miracle has been accomplished. To forgive is to heal. The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. What is there, then, he cannot heal? What miracle can be withheld from him? (ACIM:T-22.1)Simply put then there’s only one job to be done, and that is to accept the Atonement – which completely cancels out the ego’s “tiny, mad idea” of the separation. The path of forgiveness which Jesus teaches thus is nothing more than the practice that gets us there from within our time-bound experience, and gives us experiential glimpses of our immortal reality as spirit in eternity, and it is those experiences, the miracles, which can convey more than words can ever hold, so that increasingly the very same words open up, since having had the experience the real meaning of what Jesus taught becomes readily evident. Many people throughout the ages have known that experiences, and in our own time teachers such as Eckhart Tolle and Jeff Foster have also reported this experience of suddenly understanding the words of Jesus on a whole different level, because they now understand him based on their own inner experience. So if accepting the Atonement, i.e. total and complete forgiveness, is our one function, then Logion 76 becomes understandable as a reminder of that, it says (as always in the Pursah version from chapter 7 of Gary Renard’s Your Immortal Reality:
J said, “God’s Divine Rule is like a merchant who had a supply of merchandise and then found a pearl. That merchant was prudent; he sold the merchandise and bought the single pearl for himself. So also with you, see the treasure that is unfailing, that is enduring, where no moth comes to eat and no worm destroys.”Forgiveness and the Atonement are also not perishable goods, they are our savings account in eternity, so while we practice forgiveness here, everything is saved up for us until our full memory of Heaven is restored to us, and we can claim our full inheritance, by waking up. Again in the words of the Course:
All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. I have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within you, and we know what God creates is eternal. You can indeed depart in peace because I have loved you as I loved myself. You go with my blessing and for my blessing. Hold it and share it, that it may always be ours. I place the peace of God in your heart and in your hands, to hold and share. The heart is pure to hold it, and the hands are strong to give it. We cannot lose. My judgment is as strong as the wisdom of God, in Whose Heart and Hands we have our being. His quiet children are His blessed Sons. The Thoughts of God are with you. (ACIM:T-5.IV.82-15)So what he promises here, is that he issues HS Green Stamps (as opposed to S&H Green Stamps at the supermarket), and he is pasting everyone of them in your little savingsbook, until you are ready to come and claim the award. As a side note, we might notice that this logion finds a close parallel in Logion 8.
Comments (5)
What comes to mind with these two lovely logia (and the beautiful Course corollaries you provide) is the Course’s “Development of Trust” section (Manual for Teachers), which speaks clearly about the necessary step of sorting out and retaining what is valuable—the pearl, the big fish, the wheat—followed by relinquishment of the valueless (the worthless merchandise, the little fish, the useless chaff), on the way to accepting the Atonement for oneself and claiming our natural inheritance:
“Next, the teacher of God must go through ‘a period of sorting out.’ This is always somewhat difficult because, having learned that the changes in his life are always helpful, he must now decide all things on the basis of whether they increase the helpfulness or hamper it. He will find that many, if not most of the things he valued before will merely hinder his ability to transfer what he has learned to new situations as they arise. Because he has valued what is really valueless, he will not generalize the lesson for fear of loss and sacrifice. It takes great learning to understand that all things, events, encounters and circumstances are helpful. It is only to the extent to which they are helpful that any degree of reality should be accorded them in this world of illusion. The word ‘value’ can apply to nothing else.” (ACIM:M-4.I.A.4)
@elalight - Yes, and what also comes to mind, is that both Linda McNabb (in her book One Again), and Margot Krikhaar, in her excellent Dutch introduction to the Course), use an analogy of “organizing closets” – interestingly Linda is a professional organizer.
@RogierFvV - Oh, that IS interesting, indeed–thank you. I do hope the Dutch one will become available in English….And “organizing closets” is a great analogy–so easy to visualize and relate to!
All or nothing! That sounds very final.
All or nothing sounds like a lost and found.