Escape from Fear

“All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that you have the ability to usurp the power of God. It is again emphasized that you neither can nor have been able to do this. In this statement lies the real justification for your escape from fear. This is brought about by your acceptance of the Atonement, which places you in a position to realize that your own errors never really occurred.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-2.II.16:1-4)

God’s world is still in His hands. We can’t change ultimate reality; we just fall into illusion. It is this that will save us. It is this that will save us from the debilitating experience of fear.

When we accept the Atonement, the place of Christ in history, the rapprochement of man/woman and God, then we have by-passed the separation forever. We have also eliminated the ego from our way of thinking. Of course, all of this is easier said than done. Often, the Atonement is felt over years, years in which we slowly come to see that God’s will and ours are actually identical. We stop trying to play God ourselves. We acknowledge that we did not create ourselves, something the ego wanted to have us believe.

We have been living in illusion. In the Atonement, we may still find illusion clinging to our feet, but we have nevertheless made progress. True reality, the intangible benefits of peace, love, joy, contentment, harmony—will become a tangible, viable result of healing the separation. True reality offers us what an illusory separation never did: peace of mind and, as A Course of Love says, a heart that informs our living.