Sean Reagan

A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive (T-1.I.27:1-2).

Miracles extend through Jesus to all the world, which makes clear the interconnectedness of all life without consideration of the limits imposed by space and time. Jesus blesses us now; Christs to come bless us now. And we are the means by which the miracle is extends, throughout time and space, ultimately transcending both. Without us there are no miracles, and without miracles there is no blessing to be shared.

We are in this together and together we are one.

The principle makes clear that forgiveness – which, because it is informed by miracles, creates miracles – is a gift from God to us. As we remember our nature in and as Creation, we naturally extend that remembance to our brothers and sisters. We remember the cause for peace together, and we become happy together. Forgiveness is fundamentally a shared experience. It is an illusion of unity that undoes the need for any other illusion.

“Privilege” is an interesting word in this context. It comes from the Latin for privacy and law, essentially suggesting that our personal transformation from fear-based thinking to love – which is the deeply intimate and restorative experience of joining with the Holy Spirit where and as we are now – sets in us a resonsibility for sharing. It confirms that healing, in order be healing, must be shared. It is a privilege to know this, and the privilege inspires us to share it.

Note that this is the first moment in A Course in Miracles where Jesus assumes the first person (though, for what it is worth, it is not the first time Jesus used the first person in early drafts of the material). The effect of this lexical choice is nontrivial. Relationship with Jesus is essential to our program of salvation. It is in that relationship that our right relationship to Creation and, by extension, to God, is established and clarified.

The miracle is a sign that the mind has chosen to be led by me in Christ’s service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow Him. All shallow roots must be uprooted, because they are not deep enough to sustain you (T-1.V.6:1-3).

One way or the other, as students of the course, we are required to come to terms with the personal and confidential tone the course takes as the direct sharing of the historical Jesus. Believe it or don’t believe it – contextualize it any way you want – but don’t avoid it.

We have a function in salvation: we are called to love in a loveless place, to accept the Atonement for our own selves, and to become responsible for the end of projection. Collectively, these actions bring forth healing. The blessing is given to all, but we receive it one by one. It is by facing Jesus directly that we realize the personal application A Course in Miracles intends for its students. We realize the form it takes in our lives, and we commit to that form with devotion and hope.

A Course in Miracles meets us where we are, but it is incumbent on us to meet the course as well, and to go with it as far as the Holy Spirit invites us to go. This is not merely “paying salvation forward” or even “back.” Rather, it is the living embodiment of healing in our lives in the world. Application, not theory, is the way that we remember God.

Miracles represent freedom from fear. “Atoning” means “undoing.” The undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles (T-1.I.26.1-3).

The shift in perception that the miracle creates in our mind is always a shift away from fear and towards love. The actual move may be only incidental or appear insignificant. It doesn’t matter. As the first principle of miracles makes clear, “all expressions of love are maximal” (T-1.I.1:4).

Fear and love both appear to us as potential responses in the world. What A Course in Miracles does is invite us to remember that only one of them is actually a real option; the other is an illusion. Therefore, what a miracle does us undo our belief in the unreal, in order to demonstrate that love, not fear in its myriad forms, is our true inheritance (T-in.1:7).

It is in this sense that the Atonement is fundamentally an “undoing.” It changes our mind. It is the active process of correction, which undoes illusion in the present, in order to reveal what was always true, and cannot be otherwise. Atonement clarifies our thinking so that we can know the love of God without the detour into fear manifesting as body-in-world. Without miracles – which are the activity of Atonement – our understanding and practice of Atonement would devolve in rules for behavior, rather than rules for decision.

Decisions are continuous. You do not always know when you are making them. But with a little practice with the ones you recognize, a set begins to form which will see you through the rest. It is not wise to let yourself become preoccupied with every step you take (T-30.I.1:1-4).

This means that in any given situation which feels unmanageable to us – be it a conflict with a family member, an addiction in the body, or an existential crisis in the mind – as ACIM students we are less concerned with updating our behavioral posture in the world, and more interested in undoing the conditions in our mind which led to the error (and its effects) in the first place. By all means go to a twelve-step meeting or take an aspirin. But don’t mistake those actions for healing the sickness of separation; they merely redress some of the symptoms.

Thus, often, our “practice” of A Course in Miracles involves sitting quietly and giving attention to what is, without judgment, without imposing any qualification or condition upon it (which impositions are always attempts to bring past and future into the present in order to minimize its healing effects). When we are still like this, we are able to give attention to the Holy Spirit and allow Him to work in our lives. Childhood memories, workplace drama, family behavioral pattners . . . the Holy Spirit disentangles all of them from what we think we are, thus allowing what we truly are to come forth in the manner of a light.

The dark journey is not the way of God’s Son. Walk in light and do not see the dark companions, for they are not fit companions for the Son of God, who was created of light and in light. The Great Light always surrounds you and shines out from you (T-11.III.4:5-7).

This divine psychotherapy with the Holy Spirit as our therapist is always ongoing, and it is always healing. Sometimes we call this “miracle-minded thinking” or “right-minded thinking.” What we call it doesn’t matter, so long as we are doing it.

Miracles are both causes and effects of miracle-minded thinking, which is always about getting out of our own way in order to allow the Holy Spirit to heal us by restoring to our awareness what we are in Truth, which is beyond the need for healing, because it cannot be other that perfectly whole. This is natural but not easy because we have trained ourselves away from what is natural. Separation takes effort.

This remembrance occurs in time and by degrees. Yet as it gathers strength in us, we learn to trust it. We lean into it. And the further we lean, the more it holds and sustains us, thus enabling even more trust and healing. In this way, Atonement saves us by pointing out that we do not need – and never did need – saving.

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.25:1-2).

Forgiveness here refers to right seeing. It refers to the process of correction in our minds, whereby perception is aligned with reality – with Creation as created – to the maximal extent possible.

Miracles facilitate this process by effectively cleansing our minds of error, especially in the very contexts that we find ourselves. So if there is a dispute in our life, or if there is a grievance or a conundrum, then the miracle is what heals that. And the healing is not necessarily about fixing what is external, but rather seeing clearly the nature of our relationship to the external.

Forgiveness allows us to be in right relationship with the external world by making clear that nothing external can truly harm us or help us, which is an extension of “nothing real can be threatened/nothing unreal exists” (T-in.2:2-3).

Love holds no grievances. When I let all my grievances go I will know I am perfectly safe (W-pI.68.6:8-9).

Thus, miracles are not necessarily experienced as comforting, at least not at first. In fact, we may experience them as discomforting, because they shift our thinking away from the familiar (which is ego, which is dominanted by fear and chaos, and whose logic is misdirection). It is important to never underestimate our desire to remain in familiar patterns, even when they damage us and others.

This is another way of saying that we are accustomed to separation, and it takes time and energy to investigate it in a truly healing way, a way that undoes separation and its effects.

The references to time in this principle have to do both with the experience of Atonement in time – e.g., I have to study A Course in Miracles, I have to practice forgiveness, I have to go to therapy and do yoga, I have to avoid using food as a defense against feeling, et cetera. These encompass the so-called life hacks that can be very helpful in our acceptance of the Atonement for ourselves.

But the principle also – especially in the phrase “dimensions of time” – makes clear that the Atonement transcends our limited ideas about what we are and what the world is. Atonement can heal the past in the present; it can heal the future in the present, and it does all this by restoring the present to our awareness.

When we are fully capable of living only in the present moment, which the Course calls the holy instant, then we recognize the way in which time is a construct – it is always relative to an observer, to an ego – and it becomes easier for us to perceive it as a construct and find out what lies beyond it.

This is a statement about experience; it is not a supernatural promise. There are no mysteries that A Course in Miracles is given to solve. It is not introducing us to some supernatural codex containing the secrets of the universe.

Rather, it restores to memory our true self, in a way that cashes out in awakening from the dream of separation. Once awakened – once knowing oneself only in terms of Atonement – then the need for time and learning end.

That we are not there yet is not a problem; it is not a crime against God or nature. Instead, it is an opportunity to embrace uncertainty and imperfection, and to accept without qualification or condition experience as it is given to us.

When we look at our lives without judgment – or, rather, with the judgment of the Holy Spirit rather than ego – then we are relieved of the need to do anything. Seeing clearly liberates us; we realize that all the anxiety and fear and guilt we have been experiencing are contingent on a way of seeing ourselves and the world that is wrong. So we let it go.

And so we agree to be healed – we agree to see with the Holy Spirit and not with the ego. And if we don’t know how to do that, then we agree to learn. Willingness, not accomplishment, is the hallmark of the miracle-minded. Nothing else becomes us.

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 (T-1.I.24:1-4).

Claims that miracles will enable us to heal the sick and raise the dead are dramatic. On this view, miracles are neither shallow nor new age wishful thinking – both common charges against A Course in Miracles. They are, rather, deeply and authentically Christian. They call us to open our minds to Christ, as Jesus did, and from that openness, call Lazarus out of the tomb.

Some people say, “wait – are you actually saying you’ve like actually literally raised the dead? Or that I am going to be able to do that on account of studying ACIM?”

I understand these concerns. But they don’t really scan when we consider one of the primary teachings of A Course in Miracles: we aren’t bodies. Therefore, death is not real. There is nothing to raise.

The insight into this – and the integration of the insight into our living – is what matters.

In other words, “raise the dead” reflects the understanding that our suffering – all of which comes to down to our identification with bodies – is a thing we are doing to ourselves (e.g., T-27.VIII.10:1), which means it is a thing that is happening at the level of the mind. The physical world is like a screen or canvas at which the ego endlessly flings mud but which the Holy Spirit lovingly bathes in light, until it is wholly translated into light.

What we are in truth is a miracle, capable of creating as God creates – which is to say, only in love. Whatever we make that is not love is simply a bad dream which disappears easily upon waking, never to be remembered. What haunts you now will not exist when you are awake.

Therefore, we can look at our lives in the world – see the challenges, the failures, the successes, the good stories and the bad, the hopes and dreams, all of it – and realize we don’t have to feel guilty. We don’t have to fix anything. We are free to be as happy as God created us happy.

In the context of this principle, “light” is a metaphor. It refers to that which is created in the mind – that which is brought forth in the mind – when the mind remembers it is God. It is held by God, it reflects God back to God, all it knows is God.

When the mind knows this, then its creations are full of love. In worldly terms, they are extensions of interior peace and understanding which naturally restore stillness and harmony to that which remains anxious and unsettled.

When we make contact with our mind in this way, we understand that all it truly can create is Love, and that all healing is an effect of Love, forever reflecting Love back to Itself. “Only the creations of light are real” is therefore a solace, a prayer we utter to remember – when we are scared or angry, defensive or aggressive – that all of this is a bad dream, soon to be over, remembered no more, and thus without effect of any kind.

The real drama is not the resurrection of the dead, but the remembrance of what we are in truth, which cannot die. When we remember this, we are no longer subject to the body’s adventures and misadventures, and we thus demonstrate to others that they too can be liberated unto a sustainable peace and happiness unrelated to the body’s coming and going.

That is what it means to heal and be healed. That is what it means to live.

Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in true perspective. This is healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels (T-1.I.23:1-2).

Note that this principle subtly points out that miracles occur in the context of separation – the healing they produce (here defined as the end of level confusion) still relies on perspective, i.e., a distinct observer of the world.

Yet the perspective is still ordered – it is still functional – because it is no longer confused about its place. It understands that perspective is always partial and therefore reflects separation. When we no longer insist that our perspective is right, then perception begins to shift from body to mind, there to become attentive to love rather than fear.

Miracles are fundamentally shifts in how we understand ourselves and the world, and they always involve seeing all relationships in a clearer light. We no longer look at the world through a lens of fear but of love, which brings forth acceptance, recognition of our shared equality, and mercy for all the so-called effects of all our so-called errors.

This is a commitment we make as miracle-workers – to see this way, to act this way in anticipation of being transformed in this way, and then – as a result of this practice – to actually being transformed. We see beyond the illusion of separation and remember our true nature as one with God in Creation.

God is praised whenever any mind learns to be wholly helpful . . . God goes out to them and through them, and there is great joy throughout the Kingdom. Every mind that is changed adds to this joy with its individual willingness to share in it. The truly helpful are God’s miracle workers . . . (T-4.VII.8:1, 5-7).

“Levels” here refers broadly to the physical and the spiritual, though it is possible to see both as having sub-levels. Emotion and intellect, for example, are body levels. Intuition and understanding are more mind levels, and mind and spirit being basically synonymous.

When we are healed by the miracle, we no longer mistake one level for another. We aren’t trying to force the physical world into a spiritual posture it can’t adopt. We aren’t over-investing in the spiritual in order to deny the physical. We aren’t in a state of resistance, trying to force our own ideal or interpretation. What is given? And what is it for? We let the Holy Spirit answer these questions, and the answer always leads to peace.

This is another way of saying that miracles realign perception, so that the various levels remain distinct and clear, lessening our confusion, and allowing us to remember again our unity with all creation.

We call this “healing” because believing in separation – and suffering its myriad effects, such as level confusion – is a form of sickness. The fix is right-seeing which, in A Course in Miracles, we call forgiveness.

To forgive is to see reality as clearly as possible, i.e., with as little judgment and emotional investment as possible. We want to see what is true, not what we prefer be true. This is harder than it seems! We are hard-wired and socially-coded for self-deception.

Yet the more we do this, the more freedom we experience, and the more freedom we experience, the less guilt, fear, anger and hate pervade our awareness. They disappear like mist in sunlight. We don’t heal them, we simply look at them without fear. Doing so reveals their fundamentally illusory nature.

In practice, this means that when our co-worker yells at us, or when we are given a task we don’t think we can do, or when our child is sick or when our dog dies, we see it not as a chance to play the victim, but as a chance to remember that we are Christ by committing to seeing differently. The more we do it the more familiar the process becomes.

As become more skillful with miracles, the mind begins to exercise more of its natural power, which is creativity. This, in turn, leads to more healing and more peace. We create a dynamic cycle in which fear and its effects are increasingly undone. What remains is peace, which is God’s gift to us in Creation.

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 (T-1.I.22:1-3).

The ego advocates for reliance on physical perception as the sole means of understanding reality. If the body cannot sense it, then it does not exist. Only the body and the material world – each of which brings the other forth – are valid. Anything else is unreal and without effect.

When we believe that, then spiritual sight and understanding are denied. They are dismissed and devalued. They atrophy without use.

On the ego’s view, when it is dark (when it’s night, when the lights are switched off, et cetera) then people and objects are obscured. They either can’t be seen or can’t clearly be seen. This is evidence the ego uses to bolster its argument that what cannot be seen cannot actually exist. The eyes – not the mind, the eyes – are the witnesses to reality.

Thus, if we cannot “see” God (the way we “see” a maple tree, say), then God cannot exist. If we cannot “see” Love, then Love cannot exist.

Miracles – which occur at the level of the mind, at the level of thought – cannot be seen and therefore – on ego’s view – do not exist. You can think about a maple tree but good luck getting any sap from the thought.

This line of reasoning distorts our awareness of reality. We lose our appreciation for our true nature in Creation, which does not depend on the body or its senses for either existence or awareness. The interconnectedness of all life – and the underlying knowledge that Love holds everything – are lost to us, because all we see is the gap between us and everything else.

What is the world except a little gap perceived to tear eternity apart, and break it into days and months and years? And what are you who live within the world except a picture of the Son of God in broken pieces, each concealed within a separate and uncertain bit of clay? (T-28.III.7:4-5).

When we think this way, we deprive ourselves of true power and creativity, as well as actual knowledge. The effect is the appearance – tangible, believable, causative – of a world that in which scarcity and judgment, suffering and pain abound.

That is the basic framework of separation, for those who need or want it explained from the perspective of a body.

The twenty-second miracle principle invites us to hold fast to our spiritual sight by declining to hide from ourselves the transformative power of miracles. Darkness cannot actually hide anything – the maple tree is still there, even at night. We can’t eat the idea of bread but we can use it to guide us to a bakery. Just so, reality cannot be hidden. Indeed, reality is the light.

Understood this way, miracles are effectively a light in self-imposed darkness that reveal the underlying unity and love that is always present in our minds and in our mind’s projections, when they are give to the Holy Spirit for translation.

As our acceptance of Christ Vision, or spiritual sight, is enhanced, we naturally begin to perceive the world as extending beyond the limited reach of the body’s senses. We learn – and begin to live – the truth that nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists (T-in.2:2-3).