A Course in Miracles wth Comments by Ron Rasmussen

By Ron Rasmussen

This book contains the Text material of A Course in Miracles which is no longer copyright protected. The comments are mine. I place it in your hands so that you may obtain a better understanding of the teachings of the Course. I have taken the Text paragraph by paragraph and added my comments to each. This helped me greatly when I first was reading the Course, and hopefully it will benefit you as well. The Course is like a labyrinth to me. I enter it and follow the path before me. I pause often and change my course of direction but always moving forward. I journey to the center of my soul, my being, my essence and there I stop for while to contemplate all that I have learned, all that I have unlearned, and all that I allowed to fall away from me. And then when the moment is right, I begin the journey once more back to where I began, only now I am not the same as when I started.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ron Rasmussen
• Release date: Mar 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311178442

Ron Rasmussen

I was born in Racine, Wisconsin in 1935, that makes me 80years young. I had 3 years in the Army, married for 32 years ending when my first wife died. I am currently married coming on 20 plus years. I worked for a manufacturing company in Wisconsin for 20 years, went to a Community College for 2 years and then worked in the legal profession for 7 years. I retired and moved to Grand Raids, MN and lived there for 7 years, moving back to Minnesota a few years ago. My spiritual path probably started at birth and is an on-going process for me. I was raised a Catholic but long ago left that thinking and moved to a more open mind concerning God.

Book preview

Chapter 1.

THE MEANING OF MIRACLES

I. Principles of Miracles

1. There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not harder or bigger than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal.

One of the most important statements made in the Course. It is a principle that is repeated many times in many ways. If we could but understand its meaning, we would understand the Course completely. This principle contains the very beginning of our thought system. It is the same as saying all problems are the same, and they are; there is no difference in any problem from another.

2. Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their Source, which is far beyond evaluation.

Notice that Source is capitalized telling us that this Source is God. God is present in our split mind through the Holy Spirit. That is our link to God. Miracles really don’t matter because they are part of the world of the ego. If the miracle is a correction, it is a correction for an illusory thought, which also makes the miracle an illusion. As such, it is only needed in a world of illusion. We do not need nor have them in heaven. We do not need nor have forgiveness in heaven. We only need miracles and forgiveness in a place where we still believe in sin, suffering and separation.

3. Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.

Later on these principles, Jesus tells us that he is the one who inspires miracles. From the point of view of function, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are synonymous. They both serve the function of being the internal Teacher or the inner Voice that will lead us home. This makes sense when you consider Jesus is the one who had totally transcended the ego, which means that the only Voice the he has within him is that of the Holy Spirit. A Course in Miracles tells us that we have two voices that are constantly speaking inside of us: ego and Holy Spirit. Since Jesus no longer has an ego, the only voice that is within him is the Holy Spirit’s Voice. They both serve as the inner Voice, the internal Teacher who corrects the errors of the ego.

The real miracle is the love that inspires the miracle, which means that the real miracle is God or the Holy Spirit and Jesus who speak for God inside our minds. This also makes it obvious that the miracle does not come from us. We are not the ones who can shift our perception from ego to the miracle; that is exactly what Holy Spirit does. All that we can do is choose the miracle instead of the ego.

4. ‘All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. His Voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know.

This is another way of saying that miracles come from love. They reflect the love of Heaven and they also reflect the life of Heaven, which has nothing at all to do with what we call life of the body and the personality, both of which are of the body. True life comes from God and it is that life that is immortal and eternal. It is the miracle which leads us back to God.

5. Miracles are habits, and should be involuntary. They should not be under conscious control. Consciously selected miracles can be misguided.

This means that the purpose of the Course is to have us constantly move from our own way of problem solving. We attack a problem; we sift through it and define it, label it, etc, and then we have answers for the problem. We are always doing that. The whole purpose of the Course is to train us look at problems in a different light. When it talks about being involuntary we mean that we don’t do the miracle. We do choose the miracles but we do not perform them. They simply can’t be done without the help of Spirit.

6. Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong.

The Course tells us that the most natural thing in this world is to be at peace and feel One with God. Peace comes from the Holy Spirit within us. So what are the unnatural things in this world? How about anger, depression, conflicts, guilt, anxiety, loss, etc. We say these are not natural because they do not begin with who we really are. These are all products of the ego. What we are saying when we say when they do occur something has gone wrong, is simply stating that we (ego) has put something in the way of our experiencing that miracle. Miracles are extensions of the love of God. That is precisely what the ego is: an obstruction to God. And from the Course we will learn how to rid ourselves of these blocks to the love of God.

7. Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first.

What is meant by purification here is nothing to do with the body. You do not purify a body or deprive a body, because the body is not impure. When we say the body is an illusion, we are also saying that there is nothing you have to do the body. What makes the body impure, sinful or unholy are our thoughts. Notice I said makes the body; makes is work of the ego. The idea expressed by the Course is that we purify the mind. If love is present in you, in your heart and in your mind, then everything you do or say will be an extension of that love. Therefore, you do need to worry about the body because that is the wrong thing to worry about. That is not where the problem lies. What you can worry about are the thoughts in your mind. The one thought that has to be healed is the thought of guilt. The Course says that miracles are everyone’s right, that they are for all us, not a few chosen people. Miracles are not things that certain people do. Miracles are something that we can do and should do. The miracle is simply changing from the ego’s view to the perception by the Holy Spirit. That is what a miracle is and that is everyone’s right.

8. Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less.

Lack is a word that Course uses from time to time and is part of the scarcity principle. That principle says that we are taught that there is something missing in us or there is something scarce. Now this principle comes from the ego and is part of the guilt we have. The ego never tells us that what we are missing, what we are experiencing as a lack, is God. God is not part of the ego system. The phrase They are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less means that the miracle is done when one is in their right mind, as opposed to one being in their wrong mind. Temporarily is an important word here. A part in the Course tells us how healing occurs when the healer is without fear. This does not state that the healer is always without fear, only in the instant he choose to heal instead of attack.

9. Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are always miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws. They bring more love both to the giver and the receiver.

Giving to the ego means that you no longer have something if you gave it away. If it given to you, then you have more of it than you had and the giver has less than he had. The miracle corrects that and teaches that what we give we also receive, since we are all one. Actually, I cannot give you anything that is out there, because there is nothing out there. What I give to you, comes from my mind. It can be love if that is what I am thinking; it can be guilt if that is where I am at and I desire to project it on you and attack you with it. And in this exercise of the ego, all I am doing is reinforcing my own guilt. If I give you love, I am reinforcing my own love. There is within us, the presence of the Holy Spirit and it is really Spirit who is giving the love. That is why when we give, we receive. This is one of the key principles of the Course and you will see it mentioned often. Miracles, then, become an exchange. You allow Spirit to extend His love from you, which actually reinforces who you are, a child of God, a child of Love; and it also reinforces who you are and thus heals you and the person you are extending love to. This is opposite to how the world thinks and how the ego thinks. The Prayer of St. Francis is just such a statement of this principle.

10. The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of their purpose.

The miracle is the joining in your mind. You might say it is an effect of the miracle, but the miracle only happens in the mind. Why? Because the only place that has a problem is the mind."

11. Prayer is the medium of miracles. It is a means of communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed.

The only prayer of any meaning is for forgiveness because you have everything. And what the Course is saying here is that the only prayer we should ever pray for is the healing of our minds. The Holy Spirit really doesn’t have to be told where to extend His love or His miracle. All that is really required is that get out of the way, which is really what forgiveness does for us. Then Holy Spirit can do His things through us. The Course goes in to a lot more detail about prayer later on in the text.

12. Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual.

A miracle is a thought of the Holy Spirit in exchange for a thought of the ego. Miracles are thoughts because everything is a thought. Nothing exists outside of our minds. The miracle is the thought that corrects the thought of separation, the main thought of the ego.

13. Miracles are both beginnings and endings, and so they alter the temporal order. They are always affirmations of rebirth, which seem to go back but really go forward. They undo the past in the present, and thus release the future.

Think of your path as a carpet that represents the entire span of your experience in this world. What the miracle does is to take certain aspects of this experience, all of which are predicated on the belief in the separation or our guilt, and here is where the beginning and the end will come from. The Course teaches us that when the separation began, in that one instant, the whole world of evolution occurred at the same time. In that one mad moment we believed that we had separated from God. This is the carpet that would constitute the whole world of evolution – the past, present and the future.

Let’s say that we are having a particular problem in one of our relationships. The miracle would cause us to focus on that relationship and forgive it. In that way, it would be a beginning and an end because it circumscribes what the problem was.

The Course also teaches us that in that same instant, God created the Holy Spirit, who undid the very thought that made the carpet. It is as if the separation occurred and in that same instant, it was corrected. The problem is that we still believe this world of time and space, which is nothing but a dream, is reality. That is exactly why the Course speaks of the Holy Spirit as a Voice. He is God’s Voice that extends into our dream so that we can awaken from the dream.

14. Miracles bear witness to truth. They are convincing because they arise from conviction. Without conviction they deteriorate into magic, which is mindless and therefore destructive; or rather, the uncreative use of mind.

Many times the Course will comment on the truth with statements such as bear witness to the truth or reflecting the truth and what is really saying is that truth is not present in this world. Why? Because there is no world. They are convincing because they arise from the conviction that comes from within us all, which is really faith. It is the faith and trust that we will better off, which is easier said than done because we are all convinced that we know best – that anger works, separate interests work, and that our ways of solving problems are the better ones. Without conviction, etc. This means that when we do not rely on the Holy Spirit, then we rely on the ego to solve the problems, and that is magic. We can define magic as anything that we do to solve a problem that is not there, which means anything we do to solve a problem on the physical level. This is how the ego would always have us solve a problem.

15. Each day should be devoted to miracles. The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively. It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning.

This principle is talking about the fundamental goal of the Course, which is to help us spend every hour of our day, all the days of our lives, continually seeing things as the Holy Spirit has us see them. This means to continue to see everything that occurs in our lives as a lesson that He would have us learn – that every single thing that occurs is a learning opportunity if we avail ourselves of that learning. Thus, everything that confronts us should be seen as an opportunity of choosing either the ego’s grievance or the Holy Spirit’s miracle.

16. Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to give as to receive. They simultaneously increase the strength of the giver and supply strength to the receiver.

This is the same idea as Principle 9. The miracle teaches us that to give and to receive are one in truth. We are all the same: teacher and pupil; therapist and patient; the who heals and the one who is healed. Remember that the error that the miracle has to correct is the error of believing we are separate. The miracle, then, becomes an expression of our joining, and that is what this principle is talking about.

17. Miracles transcend the body. They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from the bodily level. 3 That is why they heal.

Miracles transcend the body because they teach us the body is not where it’s at. The body is not what the problem is and therefore, by changing our minds we can transcend the laws of the body. It is so important if you are going to work with A Course in Miracles, that it teaches that God did not create this world. The laws of this world – gravity, death, sickness, AND NUTRITION are man-made; they are a part of the ego mind. The ego made them, and we give those laws power by virtue of our allegiance to the ego. By shifting that allegiance, we could then transcend all those laws.

18. A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. You recognize your own and your neighbor's worth simultaneously.

That is another way of saying what we have already talked about, that the miracle helps us recognize and remember that we are one and the same, and that our worth is established by God. Your worth is the same as mine. If I see you as being worthier that I, or less worthy that I am – victim and victimizer – then that is an attack. An attack on the Sonship and therefore an attack on the Creator of the Sonship.

19. Miracles make minds one in God. They depend on cooperation because the Sonship is the sum of all that God created. Miracles therefore reflect the laws of eternity, not of time.

This means that what miracles do is restore to our mind the awareness of our oneness in God. Miracles do not make us one in God; miracles remind us that we are one in God…the key idea in the ego system and the ego’s way of perceiving is that we are separate. If I believe that my body is sick, then I am making my body real, which means I am making the body’s purpose real. This is separation. If I become upset because you are sick, I am doing the very same thing.

20. Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle.

Again the same idea that truth and holiness are not found in the body but in our minds. When our minds are healed completely, we will know the truth of identity as spirit. Think about this: the Holy Spirit cannot be in our bodies because the body is not real. God would not place Spirit in someplace that is but an illusion. Bodies neither get sick or get well. It is only the mind that can be sick and therefore, only the mind that can be healed.

21. Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others.

This is the first statement in the Course on forgiveness. Remember that God does not forgive. When the Course mentions forgiveness of God, it is referring to the love of God. Forgiveness is referred to in other words within the Course. The words: miracle, healing, Atonement, all describe the same process. Later on the Course will describe forgiveness as the act of forgiving your brother for what he has not done.

22. Miracles are associated with fear only because of the belief that darkness can hide. You believe that what your physical eyes cannot see does not exist. This leads to a denial of spiritual sight.

This one gets a little involved for some. The ego teaches that within us is the dark secret spot which is our guilt, and it is this which we really are. This makes us feel like we terrible, sinful people. Then we believe that in some way we can be protected from this truth by defending the ego is all of its pursuits.

Miracles are associated with fear only because of the belief that darkness can hide. Once you believe that darkness cannot hide, that the defense we used don’t do what we thought they did, then you are ready to understand that nothing has really been hidden anywhere the guilt is not bad; it is but a belief, and illusion that will soon vanish.

We believe that what our physical eyes cannot see does not exist. If we do see a problem, then the problem doesn’t exist. If I cover up my guilt, then it is not there. This, of course, is the idea that darkness can hide. When the Course talks about vision or spiritual sight, it is not referring to seeing with our eyes. It means seeing with the eyes of the Holy Spirit, which is really an attitude. It has nothing to do with physical seeing.

23. Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in true perspective. This is healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels.

The levels that are being talked of as confusing are the levels of the mind and the body. The ego runs with the problem of guilt which is in our minds and our true sickness and tries to tell us that the body is sick. This miracle puts it right back where it came from and says that the body cannot be sick, only the mind. This is all this miracle does. It puts the problem right back at the source.

24. Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both. You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator. Everything else is your own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the creations of light are real.

The Holy Spirit does not heal the body because first of all, the body cannot be sick and secondly, He cannot heal the body because He did not make it sick. What Spirit does heal is the guilt in our minds that thinks the body can be sick. It does this by helping us change our minds about the guilt which we choose. This is a very important distinction to keep in your mind, so that you do not ask the Holy Spirit to help with something in the material world.

25. 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.

This is the first statement about Atonement in the Course. The word is a synonym for the word correction, and it is the term used in the Course for the plan that came into existence with the Holy Spirit to undo the error that we believe we are separate from God. The creation of the Holy Spirit was of course by God and placed within our mind, and is our link with God while we are in this dream. It undoes the separation belief, thus correcting our error. The Holy Spirit is the expression of the Atonement, which again really states that the separation from God never really happened. Atonement is the Course word for the overall plan of awakening the Son of God (us) from this dream that we are separate.

The Course tells that our only responsibility is to accept the Atonement for ourselves. That further means that we accept the denial of the separation and that guilt is unreal in the specific relationships and situations we come into. Atonement then could be said to be, our own individual spiritual path back to God.

26. Miracles represent freedom from fear. Atoning means undoing. The undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles.

To look through the eyes of the ego is to look through eyes of fear. We would never attack another or harm another if we were not afraid of them. By asking Holy Spirit for help, we are choosing the eyes of love through which to see, instead of the eyes of fear. Atoning means undoing, which is another word for correction. When we atone for our supposedly sins, we really undo our belief in sin. We do make it real. we do not give it any power. You can deny the reality of sin by changing it to a mistake. The Course teaches us that sins are punished, and mistakes are corrected.

27. A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive.

This is the first time the person Jesus is mentioned in the Course. The miracle has its source of course in God, but is expressed through Jesus. Jesus, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, brings the love of God through us to other people, closing the gap we believe is between us and God. That is what a miracle does. As we forgive, we are forgiven, which means we accept the love of God for ourselves. Naturally, the more we accept forgiveness, the more we extend the same to others. It is an important item to remember: Jesus does the miracles, not us. Our task is only to clear our minds of anything unlike love, which would interfere with the flow of love.

28. Miracles are a way of earning release from fear. Revelation induces a state in which fear has already been abolished. Miracles are thus a means and revelation is an end.

Earning does not mean what it means in this world. "Earning means achieving a release from fear. When we experience a revelation, in that sweet instant, there is total lack of fear in us. Something has happened within us making us completely open to God. Unfortunately, revelations do not last, they are temporary in nature. We then revert back to the issues the ego is confronting us with.

29. Miracles praise God through you. 2 They praise Him by honoring His creations, affirming their perfection. 3 They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm spirit-identification.

One of the Christian ideas is that we should praise God. Simply put, God does not want nor need us to praise Him. God does not have an ego which requires praising. The way a miracle praises God is by reflecting His being and His love, not by words or actions. One way that special love differs from real love is that special love is always an exclusive experience. It will always exclude certain people. The love of God includes everyone. God makes no exceptions, no exclusions. Miracles praise God by uniting all of us in our mind.

30. By recognizing spirit, miracles adjust the levels of perception and show them in proper alignment. This places spirit at the center, where it can communicate directly.

This principle is the same of Number 23. The miracle shows us again that the problem is not in the body, but in the mind. It is a problem of guilt which is our defense against love, who we really are. The true center of our being is not the ego, not guilt; but it is spirit. The Course tells us that perception is not a fact, but merely an interpretation. Therefore we can change our interpretation again and again, if necessary. We see what it we want to see or need to see. We cannot change the world, but we can change how we view it.

31. Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. You should thank God for what you really are. The children of God are holy and the miracle honors their holiness, which can be hidden but never lost.

Here Jesus is telling us again that we stand in awe of him. Instead, we should be grateful for the miracle because of the healing and peace that it brings. We should be in awe of the Source of the miracle, God, but not of the miracle itself.

32. I inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede for your holiness and make your perceptions holy. By placing you beyond the physical laws they raise you into the sphere of celestial order. In this order you are perfect.

Here Jesus states very clearly that he is the source of miracles. The Course tells us that we do not know our own best interests, let alone someone else’s. Naturally we should ask the one that does know. If we try to act on our own, we are trying to be inspirers of miracles, usurping the role of Jesus. This is just how separation came about.

The word intercession is not used as we know it normally. Here it is being used somewhat differently. Jesus intercedes between the holiness of Christ that we truly are and the self we believe we are. This of course tells us that we are holy and perfect and that everything else is but an illusion of the ego system.

33. Miracles honor you because you are lovable. They dispel illusions about yourself and perceive the light in you. They thus atone for your errors by freeing you from your nightmares. By releasing your mind from the imprisonment of your illusions, they restore your sanity.

Miracles do away with all the illusions about us being separate, of being bodies, about others being bodies also it does away with our role of victimizer, either by ourselves or others. They really help us understand that we are all the same, we are really only One. We all came into this dream together and we will all leave this dream together.

34. Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning for lack they establish perfect protection. The spirit's strength leaves no room for intrusions.

Miracles restore to the mind its awareness of the abundance of God, which never really left. All the miracle does is to take a veil that the ego placed in the mind to hide the fact of who we really are. By correcting our lack, miracles establish a protection. The ego teaches non-stop that we are always lacking something, needing something which really means we are vulnerable. And this of course means we need protection (another lack). The miracle shows us that we lack nothing and thereby need no protection. Protection of spirit is merely the invulnerability of spirit. We have already heard that a child of God cannot be hurt. That is one of the clearest understandings of the crucifixion. This is what Jesus taught us: despite what the world perceived, nothing was done to him. His body may have been attacked, but he could not have been attacked. He identified with the protection of spirit because he knew who he was, therefore it did not matter what was done to his body. That is the protection of sprit.

35. Miracles are expressions of love, but they may not always have observable effects.

A short statement but very important. One of the traps we fall into constantly is that we want results. We want the cold to go away, the wounds to heal, AND THE tumor to disappear and if they don’t does that mean that we are not good healers? No, of course not. What we have done is fallen into the trap where we believe the body is real. One of the major cautions repeated many times in the Course is: do not make the error real.

36. Miracles are examples of right thinking, aligning your perceptions with truth as God created it.

Later the Course used the term right-mindedness which is thinking along with the Holy Spirit instead of going out with the ego. The miracle does not directly express the truth of God, but it is aligned with it or reflects it. The truth of God is that we are all one. In this dream, we experience that oneness by transcending the barriers of separation made by the ego, i.e. thoughts of anger, hurt, victimization, etc.

37. A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly. This places you under the Atonement principle, where perception is healed. Until this has occurred, knowledge of the Divine Order is impossible.

Erroneous perception is perceiving a problem in the external world. The miracle merely reorganizes perception because it shifts perception back to where the problem really is, and that is in our minds. Jesus introduces the miracle. We have only to ask him for it, to seek his help in seeing a situation that same way he does. This is true perception. Jesus takes all false perceptions that we have made real – sickness, war, anger – and simply shows them to us for what they are: a call for healing and help. The Atonement principle is then chosen, which can be restated as the denial of the reality of separation and guilt.

Another term the Course uses over and over again is knowledge. As the Course uses it, it is synonymous with Heaven. The opposite to knowledge is perception. Knowledge is of spirit, of God, and cannot be attained in this world. The Course very clearly states that knowledge is not the goal of this Course. Peace is.

38. The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles. He recognizes both God's creations and your illusions. He separates the true from the false by His ability to perceive totally rather than selectively.

What this is saying, is that the Holy Spirit is like a revolving door, sometime He is in world of God’s creations and sometimes He is our world of illusions. Later in the Course, we will be told He is part of the Trinity that has a symbolic function. What this means is that He can function in a world of symbols, which is this world. There are no symbols in Heaven.

39. The miracle dissolves error because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, darkness automatically disappears.

This is the same as saying that the Holy Sprit dissolves error, corrects errors, undoes errors or atones for errors. He realizes that all errors are unreal and as such do not exist. There is no grading in ERRORS; one is not greater than another.

40. The miracle acknowledges everyone as your brother and mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God.

The error the miracles corrects is the error that we believe we are separated from God. It makes no difference if we believe we are separate bodies, or that we are separated from others because of the horrible things they do. The miracle only reflects on the fact that we are one, and that is what Jesus is constantly reminding us. We are all one with him. The universal mark of God is our sharing in the light of Christ.

41. Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles. They thus correct, or atone for, the faulty perception of lack.

The basic concept of the ego is the scarcity principle. We feel something is lacking in us because we have separated ourselves from God. This is exactly where guilt comes from. This makes the ego appear real to us and does the body. We not only see ourselves but others as lacking. This miracle reflects upon our wholeness that is our true identity. Wholeness can be equated with abundance which is the denial of the principle of the ego. Abundance as used by the Course does refer to anything material, anything on the outside of us. Abundance is, according to the Course, that the Son of God can never lack anything or ever be in need, since the gifts of God are always with him.

42. A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your false sense of isolation, deprivation and lack.

We feel we are separated from GOD; therefore we are separated from each other. Because we believe this, we project the blame for the separation onto others and truly believe they are the cause. This is where deprivation comes into being. We believe we are being deprived of something and someone else is responsible for that feeling. It is saying that something I want, or need or even am, I cannot have because you won’t let me. This is a major denial on our part that we are responsible for our feelings. And of course, guilt comes in here because it also means lacking. We cannot believe or want to, that we did whatever we are experiencing to ourselves. It must be someone else’s fault. The Course clearly states The secret of salvation is but this: That you are doing this unto yourself.

43. Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness.

This is later referred to as right-mindedness. We shift our mind from the ego’s thinking (wrong-mindedness) to Spirit’s way of thinking (right-mindedness). We release the ego’s way of viewing and choose instead the view with Spirit. We see everything as an opportunity to learn and forgive.

44. The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and the acceptance of His Atonement.

This miracle joins you with someone that you believe you are separated from. Again, this is a reflection that we are all one in Christ, thus correcting the error of separation. Accepting Christ’s Atonement is accepting this principle of being one.

45. A miracle is never lost. It may touch many people you have not even met, and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware.

This is close to Number 35. The Course states: When I am healed I am not healed alone. This can have effects on people who have died, as well as the people physically present. Time is not linear and we are joined in one mind, regardless of the time and space we may think we are in at present. Again, the Course only asks us to accept the Atonement for ourselves. The extension of the Atonement is not our concern because we have no idea what it means to be truly helpful.

46. The Holy Spirit is the highest communication medium. Miracles do not involve this type of communication, because they are temporary communication devices. When you return to your original form of communication with God by direct revelation, the need for miracles is over.

This is telling us how the Holy Spirit communicates from God to us. He is the link between Heaven and hell, or reality and this dream. This is again, the distinction between the miracle and revelation. The Course tells us: When you return to your original form of communication with God by direct revelation, the need for miracles is over. When we have forgiven everyone, completed our journey, then we will no longer need the Holy Spirit as a link to God because there will no longer be an ego. Thus are we restored to our original awareness of perfect oneness with Him. The goal of the miracle is not God but the shift in our perception that clears the way to God. That is the function of the Holy Spirit. The miracle only has meaning within this dream, within the separated feeling, this world.

47. The miracle is a learning device that lessens the need for time. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not under the usual laws of time. In this sense it is timeless.

There is no time! Helen Shucman complained to Jesus about her life being so difficult. She was not complaining about her external existence but her internal conflict. In his response to her, he gave her an image of a mountain. He said: You are walking through the mountain. It would be much easier, in terms of requiring less effort, if you walked up the mountain and then down the other side, but it would take you much, much longer. By walking through the mountain, which is more difficult, you will save a lot of time. Walking through the mountain is walking through very difficult and very painful situations, which in the usual course of events would have taken you many, many lifetimes, which is walking up the mountain and down the other side. The Course aims at saving time more quickly by having more people having their minds healed quickly so the Atonement can be speeded up. This is why for some people, that once they begin working the Course, things in their life appear to become worse. It is not because God is punishing them, but because the Holy Spirit has taken their request seriously. They are in effect saying to Spirit that they want to learn more quickly. The miracle undoes time. It still occurs within the dimension of time, but it abolishes also. The most important point in this miracle is that the miracle is the means by which the Holy Spirit uses to teach us that we are not victims of the world. Our problems are not what others have done to us, but rather what we believe we have done to ourselves.

48. The miracle is the only device at your immediate disposal for controlling time. Only revelation transcends it, having nothing to do with time at all.

Revelation is not the correction but it aids us in remembering that this is not a real world. The miracle which undoes the belief of separation in our MIND joins us with each other. This all reinforces what is true and acts as a reminder to us when we are tempted to believe in a reality which is false, which is but an illusion.

49. The miracle makes no distinction among degrees of misperception. It is a device for perception correction, effective quite apart from either the degree or the direction of the error. This is its true indiscriminateness.

This really states the first principle again – there is no order of difficulty in miracles. It talks more of the same idea, that the miracle corrects the error, no matter what it looks like – love or fear – or anything else. It just doesn’t make any difference, errors are all the same.

50. The miracle compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in accord with it as true, and rejecting what is out of accord as false.

Here is the distinction between making and creating. This is almost the same as is found in Principle 38. God creates and ego makes. Everything we do that unites us with each other as seen with Spirit is truth. It is not truth as known in Heaven, but it is truth because it REFLECTS the thoughts of Heaven. If it does fall into that description, then it is false.

And so we have the 50 principles of A Course in Miracles. These principles are brought out many times within the Course. These brief explanations are just that, brief. They are meant to give you a little understanding of the Course.

Chapter 1

II. Revelation, Time and Miracles

1. Revelation induces complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. It reflects the original form of communication between God and His creations, involving the extremely personal sense of creation sometimes sought in physical relationships. Physical closeness cannot achieve it. Miracles, however, are genuinely interpersonal, and result in true closeness to others. Revelation unites you directly with God. Miracles unite you directly with your brother. Neither emanates from consciousness, but both are experienced there. Consciousness is the state that induces action, though it does not inspire it. You are free to believe what you choose, and what you do attests to what you believe.

Revelation is but a personal communication between God and God’s creations – us. It links us direct to God. Revelation is truly without description because it is of God. We will not experience with the body, but within ourselves. And revelation which unites us with God, will unite us with our brother. And look at the last statement – we are free to believe what we choose, and what we demonstrate is what we believe.

2. Revelation is intensely personal and cannot be meaningfully translated. That is why any attempt to describe it in words is impossible. Revelation induces only experience. Miracles, on the other hand, induce action. They are more useful now because of their interpersonal nature. In this phase of learning, working miracles is important because freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon you. Revelation is literally unspeakable because it is an experience of unspeakable love.

Some of what is stated in the first paragraph is repeated again here, just a bit differently. Whenever anything is repeated in the Course, and most of the Course is repeated over and over again, but each different WORD are used, it is meant for us to pay close attention to. Remember this is a Course in training our mind – it is subtle at best but thorough to be sure. Revelation – Love – God – all not descriptive with the words we know or even could try to come up with. We cannot describe God – Love – Revelation – ourselves with words of an illusion. What is revealed to us by God is experienced within. Miracles are but a change of thought and the results are often projected before us in this world we make.

3. Awe should be reserved for revelation, to which it is perfectly and correctly applicable. It is not appropriate for miracles because a state of awe is worshipful, implying that one of a lesser order stands before his Creator. You are a perfect creation, and should experience awe only in the Presence of the Creator of perfection. The miracle is therefore a sign of love among equals. Equals should not be in awe of one another because awe implies inequality. It is therefore an inappropriate reaction to me. An elder brother is entitled to respect for his greater experience, and obedience for his greater wisdom. He is also entitled to love because he is a brother, and to devotion if he is devoted. It is only my devotion that entitles me to yours. There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you.

For me, awe implies a sense of adoration; a sense of being less than the person or object I am in awe of. Miracles do not demand awe because they are a natural experience, a sign of love. You – me – our brother – are all created by God as equal to each other – no one of us is greater than another. No awe is do one of us, but all of us. We are told here that awe is experience in the presence of God – awe is experience within us and when we see within our brother that which we have within us. And the author – Jesus – is stating that no awe is due him, for he is as we are. The state that Jesus is at is the state we shall also be. That state of being is a potential within us all. We shall realize that potential as we waken more and more to our own Truth; as we remember more and more of who we are in Truth.

4. No man cometh unto the Father but by me does not mean that I am in any way separate or different from you except in time, and time does not really exist. The statement is more meaningful in terms of a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. You stand below me and I stand below God. In the process of rising up, I am higher because without me the distance between God and man would be too great for you to encompass. I bridge the distance as an elder brother to you on the one hand, and as a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I render complete because I share it. This may appear to contradict the statement I and my Father are one, but there are two parts to the statement in recognition that the Father is greater.

This paragraph very simply states that Jesus is with us; we are with him; and we are with God. He explains in terms of vertical alignment with God because the logic of the ego we believe we are can grasp this meaning somewhat easier. Later in the Course we will be told this again but in a much different way. For now, for the beginner in all of us, this is can be grasped by us. He is telling us here that we are like him (Jesus) and he like us, and we are all as God is.

5. Revelations are indirectly inspired by me because I am close to the Holy Spirit, and alert to the revelation-readiness of my brothers. I can thus bring down to them more than they can draw down to themselves. The Holy Spirit mediates higher to lower communication, keeping the direct channel from God to you open for revelation. Revelation is not reciprocal. It proceeds from God to you, but not from you to God.

Remember as you read this, which is early on in the dictation. The voice with the mind of Helen – Jesus – is gently telling her what he can do for her and others. He states that he is close to the Holy Spirit – the Voice of God. This does not mean that we are NOT; he is simply telling her that he is. The Holy Spirit – the Voice of God – is our link to God in this dream we believe we are having. It is our channel to the Truth we are. Remember that revelation is communication with God – that God reveals to us what we can grasp in any given time. All of this flows through us via the Holy Spirit.

6. The miracle minimizes the need for time. In the longitudinal or horizontal plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception. This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary. There is no relationship between the time a miracle takes and the time it covers. The miracle substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does so by the underlying recognition of perfect equality of giver and receiver on which the miracle rests. The miracle shortens time by collapsing it, thus eliminating certain intervals within it. It does this, however, within the larger temporal sequence.

Again he talks to us in terms of planes that is acceptable to the logic of ego. Remember it is the ego part of us that is also being affected by our reading the Course. We are in the process of changing our belief system – the system of ego – to the system of Truth hidden within us. A shift in our perception – a change of thought – takes no time as we know it. And the reason given to us behind this is that the giver and receiver are the same. No time exists in a miracle. When we more fully understand that time as we know does not exist, then we will be much more ready to comprehend what is being told us here. A miracle happens now, and as we already know, now has no past nor future, therefore now has no time associated with it. The miracle takes place with a holy instant – a term which will be discussed more in the Course as we move one.

Chapter 1

Section III - Atonement and Miracles

1. I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin. When you offer a miracle to any of my brothers, you do it to yourself and me. The reason you come before me is that I do not need miracles for my own Atonement, but I stand at the end in case you fail temporarily. My part in the Atonement is the canceling out of all errors that you could not otherwise correct. When you have been restored to the recognition of your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. The power to work miracles belongs to you. I will provide the opportunities to do them, but you must be ready and willing. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability, because conviction comes through accomplishment. The ability is the potential, the achievement is its expression, and the Atonement, which is the natural profession of the children of God, is the purpose.

Early in the Course, Jesus is saying that he is charge of the Atonement – the correction of error. Had he told us we were, we would not be able to comprehend the meaning. He tells us very simply that when we can see our brother is the Light of Love he is, we also see Jesus and ourselves as well. The correction of error, the changing of a thought, can appear to be extremely difficult for us and so we have the assurance that he is close by for us just in case we waiver in our belief. And he also tells us that he is canceling out errors we cannot do right now. What a great thought this is. And now we become more aware that error can easily be corrected; that error is not sin and will forever be with us until we believe someone else can take it from us. The power to change our mind is already within us. All we need to have we are told is a little willingness to want to use that power – to want to change our thoughts of fear to thoughts of love. The Course will tell us many times that we need only show a little willingness and the rest is done for us. But we all know how difficult it is at times to show that little willingness. Doing miracles – changing our thoughts – is our potential, and through them we express our Truth, and the correction of error is complete.

2. Heaven and earth shall pass away means that they will not continue to exist as separate states. My word, which is the resurrection and the life, shall not pass away because life is eternal. You are the work of God, and His work is wholly lovable and wholly loving. This is how a man must think of himself in his heart, because this is what he is.

This is how we must think of ourselves – we are eternal as is God. We are the ‘work’ of God, and what God creates is perfect. This is what we are – perfect as God created us.

3. 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.

And who are the ‘forgiven’? We are as we change our thoughts of fear to thoughts of love. We literally forgive ourselves for holding those thoughts, and in our forgiveness, we join with others in uniting of all. A change of thought – a miracle – is the way the Voice of God works through us.

4 I am the only one who can perform miracles indiscriminately, because I am the Atonement. You have a role in the Atonement which I will dictate to you. Ask me which miracles you should perform. This spares you needless effort, because you will be acting under direct communication. The impersonal nature of the miracle is an essential ingredient, because it enables me to direct its application, and under my guidance miracles lead to the highly personal experience of revelation. A guide does not control but he does direct, leaving it up to you to follow. Lead us not into temptation means Recognize your errors and choose to abandon them by following my guidance.

Here we are told to just follow Jesus in his guidance to us – and the guidance of the Holy Spirit as well. We do not yet know what needs correction, so we present our thoughts and are guided in changing them. After some time of training we will discover that we will recognize which thoughts require our attention. We will be always directed, but it will become much more subtle. We shall ‘recognize our errors and choose to change them’.

5. Error cannot really threaten truth, which can always withstand it. Only the error is actually vulnerable. You are free to establish your kingdom where you see fit, but the right choice is inevitable if you remember this:

Spirit is in a state of grace forever.

Your reality is only spirit.

Therefore you are in a state of grace forever.

Remember the Introduction to the Course – Nothing real can be threatened.? Here is that statement once again, but in a different manner. Nothing can threaten Truth – we are Truth, so nothing can threaten us. We are free to choose as we believe we must, but we must remember to follow this concept: If Spirit is a state of forever grace, and our reality is Spirit, then we must forever be in the state of grace. In a state of grace, nothing can threaten us.

Atonement undoes all errors in this respect, and thus uproots the source of fear. Whenever you experience God's reassurances as threat, it is always because you are defending misplaced or misdirected loyalty. When you project this to others you imprison them, but only to the extent to which you reinforce errors they have already made. This makes them vulnerable to the distortions of others, since their own perception of themselves is distorted. The miracle worker can only bless them, and this undoes their distortions and frees them from prison.

The correction of error undoes all threats – all illusions. If I find myself defending anything, I know that I am not thinking thoughts of love. And I may even try to project my fear – my guilt – onto others in an attempt to imprison them, while I am only building my own prison for me. I become visibly vulnerable and am easily threatened by fear. As I ask for help from the Holy Spirit – as I show a little willingness to change my thoughts, my thoughts fade to nothing – my fears vanish.

6. You respond to what you perceive, and as you perceive so shall you behave. The Golden Rule asks you to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This means that the perception of both must be accurate. The Golden Rule is the rule for appropriate behavior. You cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive correctly. Since you and your neighbor are equal members of one family, as you perceive both so you will do to both. You should look out from the perception of your own holiness to the holiness of others.

I respond to what I believe I see, and what I believe I see, is real to me. What do I want others to do to me, that I also can do to them? What