Accepting ACIM Atonement

The point of ACIM Atonement is realizing that this world is a delusion, none of it really happened; hence you and everyone are innocent. Accepting Atonement for yourself means you believe this and hence live that way: seeing only the light of love and not shadows of darkness. Accepting Atonement and ACIM forgiveness are the same: overlooking the shadows and seeing only love.

God is love. Reality is love. Anything else does not exist.

My ACIM workbook lesson for today was about the topic of seeing the world forgiven: The light has come. I have forgiven the world.

Reading the lesson for the first time, it seemed like such pie-in-the-sky to believe I would see a world filled only with light starting today. But a series of thoughts brought me to the conclusion that I do believe I have accepted Atonement, even if I clearly saw for only a little bit. Having seen once, I can continue to re-produce the opening.

I was thinking about the plant manager whose plant I just left. I was thinking about the move to Texas. I was thinking about the myriad of negative thoughts I have all day long and how, since I seem unable to stop them, they would prevent me from ever forgiving the world (seeing it as light). But then, my ACIM teaching whispered to me:

1. My negative thoughts are "just" temptation. 
2. And anyway, none of this "really" happened. 
3. I am not guilty.

These 3 thoughts, constitute my realization that I have accepted the Atonement for myself; and that I know it in my heart. These 3 thoughts, realized as beliefs, put a distance between me and my ego. I identify less with my ego. If I am not my ego, I can be innocent. Being innocent is the only way to be free. I must be free; that's the only way I'll be happy or go to Texas as a free person. I must go to Texas as a free person because I have more to learn. I can't learn if I continually hold my past against the present. The spiral of my learning must go higher.

As of this moment, I do have a bright future as a free innocent person.