1. Atonement is for all, because it is the way to undo the belief that anything is for you alone. 2To forgive is to overlook. 3Look, then, beyond error and do not let your perception rest upon it, for you will believe what your perception holds. 4Accept as true only what your brother is, if you would know yourself. 5Perceive what he is not and you cannot know what you are, because you see him falsely. 6Remember always that your Identity is shared, and that Its sharing is Its reality.
2. You have a part to play in the Atonement, but the plan of the Atonement is beyond you. 2You do not understand how to overlook errors, or you would not make them. 3It would merely be further error to believe either that you do not make them, or that you can correct them without a Guide to correction. 4And if you do not follow this Guide, your errors will not be corrected. 5The plan is not yours because of your limited ideas about what you are. 6This sense of limitation is where all errors arise. 7The way to undo them, therefore, is not of you but for you.
3. The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because you have forgotten how to do it. 2The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of the natural use of your abilities. 3By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created. 4If 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. 5All their harmfulness lies in the ego’s judgment. 6All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit.
4. The ego, too, has a plan of forgiveness because you are asking for one, though not of the right teacher. 2The ego’s plan, of course, makes no sense and will not work. 3By following its plan you will merely place yourself in an impossible situation, to which the ego always leads you. 4The ego’s plan is to have you see error clearly first, and then overlook it. 5Yet how can you overlook what you have made real? 6By seeing it clearly, you have made it real and cannot overlook it. 7This is where the ego is forced to appeal to “mysteries,” insisting that you must accept the meaningless to save yourself. 8Many have tried to do this in my name, forgetting that my words make perfect sense because they come from God. 9They are as sensible now as they ever were, because they speak of ideas that are eternal.
5. Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear. 2Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it. 3Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you. 4Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven. 5What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent. 6By steadily and consistently cancelling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it.
6. Follow the Holy Spirit’s teaching in forgiveness, then, because forgiveness is His function and He knows how to fulfill it perfectly. 2That is what I meant when I said that miracles are natural, and when they do not occur something has gone wrong. 3Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow the Holy Spirit’s plan of salvation, recognizing that you do not understand what it is. 4His work is not your function, and unless you accept this you cannot learn what your function is.
7. The confusion of functions is so typical of the ego that you should be quite familiar with it by now. 2The ego believes that all functions belong to it, even though it has no idea what they are. 3This is more than mere confusion. 4It is a particularly dangerous combination of grandiosity and confusion that makes the ego likely to attack anyone and anything for no reason at all. 5This is exactly what the ego does. 6It is unpredictable in its responses, because it has no idea of what it perceives.
8. If you have no idea what is happening, how appropriately can you expect to react? 2You might ask yourself, regardless of how you may account for the reaction, whether its unpredictability places the ego in a sound position as your guide. 3Let me repeat that the ego’s qualifications as a guide are singularly unfortunate, and that it is a remarkably poor choice as a teacher of salvation. 4Anyone who elects a totally insane guide must be totally insane himself. 5Nor is it true that you do not realize the guide is insane. 6You realize it because I realize it, and you have judged it by the same standard I have.
9. The ego literally lives on borrowed time, and its days are numbered. 2Do not fear the Last Judgment, but welcome it and do not wait, for the ego’s time is “borrowed” from your eternity. 3This is the Second Coming that was made for you as the First was created. 4The Second Coming is merely the return of sense. 5Can this possibly be fearful?
10. What can be fearful but fantasy, and who turns to fantasy unless he despairs of finding satisfaction in reality? 2Yet it is certain that you will never find satisfaction in fantasy, so that your only hope is to change your mind about reality. 3Only if the decision that reality is fearful is wrong can God be right. 4And I assure you that God is right. 5Be glad, then, that you have been wrong, but this was only because you did not know who you were. 6Had you known, you could no more have been wrong than God can.
11. The impossible can happen only in fantasy. 2When you search for reality in fantasies you will not find it. 3The symbols of fantasy are of the ego, and of these you will find many. 4But do not look for meaning in them. 5They have no more meaning than the fantasies into which they are woven. 6Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful, but no one calls them true. 7Children may believe them, and so, for a while, the tales are true for them. 8Yet when reality dawns, the fantasies are gone. 9Reality has not gone in the meanwhile. 10The Second Coming is the awareness of reality, not its return.
12. Behold, my child, reality is here. 2It belongs to you and me and God, and is perfectly satisfying to all of Us. 3Only this awareness heals, because it is the awareness of truth.