By George Krestik*

When I was about 8 years old, my mother tucked me in bed one night and said: "George, every time you do something wrong or don't do what I tell you there is a little black spot that goes on your heart. When your heart gets full of those black spots that is when you die." Those words were a call for me to be a 'good boy' and 'mommy pleaser.' With normal growing up boy misbehaviors, guilt and shame entered my childhood that carried over into teen years and my whole adult life as well. I am currently 68 years of age.

 

Our family attended a church that each Sunday made confession: " O Almighty God, merciful Father, I a poor miserable sinner confess unto Thee all my sins and iniquities, with which I have ever offended Thee and justly deserved Thy temporal and eternal punishment...." Needless to say, a cloud has hung with me all my 60 years... a shame-based personality with regret, remorse, sin, guilt, depravity, ongoing sadness, and on and on.

 

This past year I have been reading A Course in Miracles and attending a monthly ACIM group. Each day I also read a portion of the CIMS Lesson website with their helpful insights into the Lessons. On May 1 I read that "the separation has never happened." In my meditation that morning the thought came that if the separation never happened, then my past never happened as well. My guilt and shame and lingering clouds of sadness from the past - NEVER occurred! And, for the first time since I was a little boy I experienced a most clear clean free Self - incredible spaciousness - no hint of the past whatsoever - pure Innocence! 

 

In John 14:20 Jesus says: "In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you." That day - what day??? Easter Resurrection, Pentecost, Ascension??? Perhaps. However, maybe 'that day' is 'Our Day of Awakening'! In our Awakening to Consciousness we are in Oneness with God! The Atonement of being at-one with God purifies the past. Our Oneness in Atonement makes us realize that there is not, nor has ever been, a past! Our Awakening is grounded in the Oneness of this verse -  'you in me and I in you' - this is what Atones us!

 

So, now? Nothing to feel bad about. Nothing to make up for. No lingering shadows. No haunting sadness. Living each day with an awareness to forgive my projected images and the dream separations that results from them. Seeing the ego's presence for what it is and asking the the Holy Spirit for help. Affirming - I am One with God! I am Spotless! I am the essence of Love that God created me.