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Each one you see you place within the holy circle of Atonement or leave outside, judging him fit for crucifixion or for redemption.

If you bring him into the circle of purity, you will rest there with him.

If you leave him without, you join him there.

Judge not except in quietness which is not of you.

Refuse to accept anyone as without the blessing of Atonement, and bring him into it by blessing him.

Holiness must be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy.

Come gladly to the holy circle, and look out in peace on all who think they are outside.

Cast no one out, for this is what he seeks, along with you.

Come, let us join him in the holy place of peace, which is for all of us, united as one within the cause of peace.

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Lesson 157

¹ This is a day of silence and of trust. It is a special time of promise in your calendar of days. It is a time Heaven has set apart to shine upon, and cast a timeless light upon this day when echoes of eternity are heard. This day is holy, for it ushers in a new experience, a different kind of feeling and awareness. You have spent long days and nights in celebrating death. Today you learn to feel the joy of life.

² This is another crucial turning point in the curriculum. We add a new dimension now—a fresh experience that sheds a light on all that we have learned already and prepares us for what we have yet to learn. It brings us to the door where learning ceases, and we catch a glimpse of what lies past the highest reaches it can possibly attain. It leaves us there an instant and we go beyond it, sure of our direction and our only goal.

³ Today it will be given you to feel a touch of Heaven, though you will return to paths of learning. Yet you have come far enough along the way to alter time sufficiently to rise above its laws and walk into eternity a while. This you will learn to do increasingly, as every lesson, faithfully rehearsed, brings you more swiftly to this holy place and leaves you for a moment to your Self.

⁴ He will direct your practicing today, for what you ask for now is what He wills. And having joined your will with His this day, what you are asking must be given you. Nothing is needed but today's idea to light your mind and let it rest in still anticipation and in quiet joy wherein you quickly leave the world behind.

⁵ From this day forth, your ministry takes on a genuine devotion and a glow that travels from your fingertips to those you touch and blesses those you look upon. A vision reaches everyone you meet, and everyone you think of, or who thinks of you. For your experience today will so transform your mind that it becomes the touchstone for the holy Thoughts of God.

⁶ Your body will be sanctified today, its only purpose being now to bring the vision of what you experience this day to light the world. We cannot give experience like this directly. Yet it leaves a vision in our eyes which we can offer everyone that he may come the sooner to the same experience in which the world is quietly forgot and Heaven is remembered for a while.

⁷ As this experience increases and all goals but this become of little worth, the world to which you will return becomes a little closer to the end of time, a little more like Heaven in its ways, a little nearer its deliverance. And you who bring it light will come to see the light more sure, the vision more distinct.

⁸ The time will come when you will not return in the same form in which you now appear, for you will have no need of it. Yet now it has a purpose and will serve it well. Today we will embark upon a course you have not dreamed of. But the Holy One, the Giver of the happy dreams of life, Translator of perception into truth, the holy Guide to Heaven given you has dreamed for you this journey which you make and start today with the experience this day holds out to you to be your own.

⁹ Into Christ's Presence will we enter now, serenely unaware of everything except His shining face and perfect Love. The vision of His face will stay with you, but there will be an instant which transcends all vision, even this, the holiest. This you will never teach, for you attained it not through learning. Yet the vision speaks of your remembrance of what you knew that instant and will surely know again.

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PART 1 ~ PART 2

I. Introduction

Par 1-3

¹ Unless you are guiltless, you cannot know God, Whose Will is that you know Him. Therefore, you must be guiltless. Yet if you do not accept the necessary conditions for knowing Him, you have denied Him and do not recognize Him, though He is all around you. He cannot be known without His Son, whose guiltlessness is the condition for knowing Him. Accepting His Son as guilty is denial of the Father so complete that knowledge is swept away from recognition in the very mind where God Himself has placed it. If you would but listen and learn how impossible this is! Do not endow Him with attributes you understand. You made Him not, and anything you understand is not of Him.

² Your task is not to make reality. It is here without your making, but not without you. You who have thrown your selves away and valued God so little, hear me speak for Him and for yourselves. You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with which it can compare and nothing you have ever felt, apart from Him, that resembles it ever so faintly. You cannot even give a blessing in perfect gentleness. Would you know of One Who gives forever and Who knows of nothing except giving?

³ The Children of Heaven live in the light of the blessing of their Father because they know that they are sinless. The Atonement was established as the means of restoring guiltlessness to the mind which has denied it and thus denied Heaven to itself. Atonement teaches you the true condition of the Son of God. It does not teach you what you are or what your Father is. The Holy Spirit, Who remembers this for you, merely teaches you how to remove the blocks that stand between you and what you know. His memory is yours. If you remember what you have made, you are remembering nothing. Remembrance of reality is in Him and therefore in you.

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II. Guilt and Guiltlessness

Par 4-15

⁴ The guiltless and the guilty are totally incapable of understanding one another. Each perceives the other as like himself, making them unable to communicate because each sees the other unlike the way he sees himself. God can communicate only to the Holy Spirit in your mind because only He shares the knowledge of what you are with God. And only the Holy Spirit can answer God for you, for only He knows what God is. Everything else that you have placed within your mind cannot exist, for what is not in communication with the Mind of God has never been. Communication with God is life. Nothing without it is at all.

⁵ The only part of your mind that has reality is the part which links you still with God. Would you have all of it transformed into a radiant message of God's Love, to share with all the lonely ones who denied Him with you? God makes this possible. Would you deny His yearning to be known? You yearn for Him, as He for you. This is forever changeless. Accept, then, the immutable. Leave the world of death behind, and return quietly to Heaven. There is nothing of value here and everything of value there. Listen to the Holy Spirit and to God through Him. He speaks of you to you. There is no guilt in you, for God is blessed in His Son as the Son is blessed in Him.

⁶ Each one of you has a special part to play in the Atonement, but the message given to each to share is always the same— God's Son is guiltless. Each one teaches the message differently and learns it differently. Yet until he teaches it and learns it, he will suffer the pain of dim awareness that his true function remains unfulfilled in him. The burden of guilt is heavy, but God would not have you bound by it. His plan for your awaking is as perfect as yours is fallible. You know not what you do, but He Who knows is with you. His gentleness is yours, and all the love you share with God He holds in trust for you. He would teach you nothing except how to be happy.

⁷ Blessed Son of a wholly blessing Father, joy was created for you. Who can condemn whom God has blessed? There is nothing in the Mind of God that does not share His shining innocence. Creation is the natural extension of perfect purity. Your only calling here is to devote yourself with active willingness to the denial of guilt in all its forms. To accuse is not to understand. The happy learners of the Atonement become the teachers of the innocence that is the right of all that God created. Deny them not what is their due, for you will not withhold it from them alone.

⁸ The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation. Do not try to steal it from him, or you will ask for guilt and will experience it. Protect his purity from every thought that would steal it away and keep it from his sight. Bring innocence to light in answer to the call of the Atonement. Never allow purity to remain hidden, but shine away the heavy veils of guilt within which the Son of God has hidden himself from his own sight. We are all joined in the Atonement here, and nothing else can unite us in this world. So will the world of separation slip away and full communication be restored between the Father and the Son.

⁹ The miracle acknowledges the guiltlessness which must have been denied to produce need of healing. Do not withhold this glad acknowledgment, for hope of happiness and release from suffering of every kind lie in it. Who is there but wishes to be free of pain? He may not yet have learned how to exchange his guilt for innocence nor realize that only in this exchange can freedom from pain be his. Yet those who have failed to learn need teaching, not attack. To attack those who have need of teaching is to fail to learn from them.

¹⁰ Teachers of innocence, each in his own way, have joined together, taking their part in the unified curriculum of the Atonement. There is no unity of learning goals apart from this. There is no conflict in this curriculum, which has one aim however it is taught. Each effort made on its behalf is offered for the single purpose of release from guilt to the eternal glory of God and His creation. And every teaching that points to this points straight to Heaven and to the peace of God. There is no pain, no trial, no fear that teaching this can fail to overcome. The power of God Himself supports this teaching and guarantees its limitless results.

¹¹ Join your own efforts to the power that cannot fail and must result in peace. No one can be untouched by teaching such as this. You will not see yourself beyond the power of God if you teach only this. You will not be exempt from the effects of this most holy lesson, which seeks but to restore what is the right of God's creation. From everyone whom you accord release from guilt, you will inevitably learn your innocence. The circle of Atonement has no end. And you will find ever-increasing confidence in your safe inclusion in what is for all in everyone you bring within its safety and its perfect peace.

¹² Peace, then, be unto everyone who becomes a teacher of peace. For peace is the acknowledgment of perfect purity from which no one is excluded. Within its holy circle is everyone whom God created as His Son. Joy is its unifying attribute, with no one left outside to suffer guilt alone. The power of God draws everyone to its safe embrace of love and union. Stand quietly within this circle and attract all tortured minds to join with you in the safety of its peace and holiness. Abide with me within it as teachers of Atonement, not of guilt.

¹³ Blessed are you who teach with me. Our power comes not of us but of our Father. In guiltlessness we know Him, as He knows us guiltless. I stand within the circle, calling you to peace. Teach peace with me and stand with me on holy ground. Remember for everyone your Father's power that He has given him. Believe not that you cannot teach His perfect peace. Stand not outside but join with me within. Fail not the only purpose to which my teaching calls you. Restore to God His Son as He created him by teaching him his innocence.

¹⁴ The crucifixion has no part in the Atonement. Only the resurrection became my part in it. That is the symbol of the release from guilt by guiltlessness. Whom you perceive as guilty, you would crucify. Yet you restore guiltlessness to whomever you see as guiltless. Crucifixion is always the ego's aim. It sees as guilty, and by its condemnation, it would kill. The Holy Spirit sees only guiltlessness, and in His gentleness, He would release from fear and reestablish the reign of love. The power of love is in His gentleness, which is of God and therefore cannot crucify nor suffer crucifixion. The temple you restore becomes your altar, for it was rebuilt through you. And everything you give to God is yours. Thus He creates, and thus must you restore.

¹⁵ Each one you see you place within the holy circle of Atonement or leave outside, judging him fit for crucifixion or for redemption. If you bring him into the circle of purity, you will rest there with him. If you leave him without, you join him there. Judge not except in quietness which is not of you. Refuse to accept anyone as without the blessing of Atonement, and bring him into it by blessing him. Holiness must be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy. Come gladly to the holy circle, and look out in peace on all who think they are outside. Cast no one out, for this is what he seeks, along with you. Come, let us join him in the holy place of peace, which is for all of us, united as one within the cause of peace.

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Allen Watson joined Robert Perry to form the Circle of Atonement in 1993 in Sedona, Arizona where Allen led retreats and workshops and authored many books based on “A Course in Miracles.”

One of his most popular books is: “A Workbook Companion: Vol I and II.”

Please send gifts of gratitude via PayPal to watsona@innocent.com.