A Course in Miracles Topic - The Plan of Atonement

Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, "My brother, choose again.". T-31.VIII.3:1,2.

The Plan of Atonement is for individuals to learn to correct those mistakes that prevent their own awakening. They can't do this by themselves, because in Truth they are not by themselves. When they have awakened, and at each step towards awakening, they are part of the chain of forgiveness in which they teach and learn from each other.

The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because you have forgotten how to do it. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of the natural use of your abilities. By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created.                    T-9.IV.31,2.

The forgiven are the means of the Atonement. Being filled with spirit, they forgive in return. Those who are released must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the plan of the Atonement. Miracles are the way in which minds that serve the Holy Spirit unite with me for the salvation or release of all of God's creations.                           T-1.III.3. 

Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. Atonement works all the time and in all the dimensions of time T.1.I.25 (The Principles of Miracles)