Sean Reagan

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).

True safety resides in our willingness to offer only empathy and compassion to our brothers and sisters. When we love even our enemies – when we are even willing to love our enemies – then we no longer have enemies. Love is our protection.

Love is the secret to true safety. And Love holds everything.

Love is the protection of the other as well. If we refuse to indulge conflict – if we decline both attack and defense – then conflict no longer exists, and the other is as safe as we are, even if they don’t believe it.

Defenselessness is strength. It testifies to the recognition of the Christ in you . . . Defenselessness can never be attacked, because it recognizes a strength so great attack is folly, or a silly game a tired child might play, when he becomes too sleepy to remember what he wants (W-pI.153.6:1-2, 4).

Given the option of nonviolence, people often ask: “does this mean I should let people walk all over me?”

It’s a fair question. But it only makes sense from the vantage point of the body, and the separated self that is supposedly indelibly associated with that body. In other words, it only makes sense if what we are can be walked on. If it can’t, then it doesn’t matter what happens to the body.

Which – surprise surprise – is exactly the point A Course in Miracles makes in its framing of Jesus’s crucifixion.

The message the crucifixion was intended to reach was that it is not necessary to perceive any form of assult in persecution, because you cannot be persecuted. If you respond with anger, you must be equating yourself with the destructible, and are therefore regarding yourself insanely (T-6.I.4:6-7).

Turn the other cheek indeed.

I elected, for your sake and mine, to demonstrate that the most outrageous assault, as judged by the ego, does not matter. As the world judges these things, but not as God knows them, I was betrayed, abandoned, beaten, torn and finally killed (T-6.I.9:1-2).

I want to be clear here. If somebody punches you, walk away. If somebody moves to hurt your child, protect your child. If you need help getting away from violence, ask for help. Ask me. I will help you. Refusing to suffer means refusing to let others be a cause of suffering – it is a gift we give, not a privilege we protect.

A Course in Miracles is a response to an identity crisis. It is a correction to the erroneous perception that we are bodies in a world. The deal is, we work together to minimize harm and maximize happiness in order to remember what we are in truth.

In my experience of studying and practicing ACIM, nonviolence is the quickest means by which to remember that we are not bodies and there is no world and thus to properly contextualize this dream and no longer be troubled by it.

Nonviolence starts with not hurting others. Yet we have to notice how much of “hurting others” occurs outside our awareness. It’s easy to realize that when we shout at somebody or cheat on somebody that it’s bad. It’s easy to say “I”m sorry.”

What is hard is realizing the way in which our deepest thoughts and biases are themselves violent, and that because of them – and because we are not investigating them – they feed the communal nightmare by which school shootings, Jesus grifters, factory farms and conspiracy-thinking gain traction and momentum.

I am suggesting there are levels of being where you realize not only that you are doing this to yourself (e.g. T-27.VIII.10:1) but you are also doing [insert heinous act here] to others.

We do not want to see this about ourselves – we do not want to wade through an endless fog of confusion to reach fetid swamps anger, hatred and fear.

And yet.

When we do this – when we reach the juncture where we are utterly repulsed by our own self – then suddenly (as if all along we were attended by a loving friend) we will discover that we can no longer hate anybody. The worst of all of us is inside us. We see that we are the problem, and then (as if all along we were attended by one who has already walked this walk), we feel only compassion for our brothers and sisters – especially the ones, near and far, who threaten us the most.

This is Love, and this Love will direct us in very specific ways (e.g., T-1.1:4:2-3).

I say this a lot because it is a core principle of our spiritual practice as students of A Course in Miracles: there is only love and the cry for love. And the response to both is the same: love.

I speak here only to my own experience. I am a friend saying “this worked for me,” not an expert saying “this is the law and the prophets.” Be kind to yourself, for you merit kindness, and don’t be afraid to face your ghosts and demons, and their facsimiles in the world. They are nothing before the light of what you are in truth.

Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God’s forgiveness by extending it to others (T-1.I.21:1-2).

Again, the emphasis here is that miracles are natural rather than supernatural. They are not spectacles. They are shifts in our understanding of perception that make us and others happier. This happiness is self-replicating. To be miracle-minded is to accept the Love that God extends throughout Creation, which acceptance naturally extends that Love to all our brothers and sisters. It is the function of Love to extend itself without limit, and it is our function to learn how to no longer be limited.

A miracle is the moment when we translate perception in a way that allows us to see the world, our self, and others correctly – which is to say, in a way that is loving and not fearful. But “loving” does not mean favorable or preferential; rather, it means neutral. Forgiveness is not pardoning somebody for a bad thing they did. Rather, it is not seeing good or bad at all. To see this way is to perceive the other not as a someone in need of correction that we can supply but rather as a friend whose errors are naturally corrected by God in the context of Creation. We need do nothing but not abandon our brother or sister. Indeed, if we understand Creation correctly, then we know that abandonment is not possible.

Thus, when we “forgive” according to A Course in Miracles, we recognize the inherent unity and innocence of all beings, and let go of the illusion of separation (including separate interests). This letting go naturally undoes our personal experiences of guilt and fear. When we forgive, we remember – and agree to not forget again – that our true identity is not defined by ego and its limited perception but by the Holy Spirit, who cannot be limited.

Thus, the miracle effectively opens us to the Love and oneness that are our inheritance as creations of God. This is what the Holy Spirit teaches us, each and every time it translates perception to reveal a world in which we are healers and helpers.

Our brothers and sisters – broadly defined to include maple trees, blue whales and neutrinos – are essential to miracles. We cannot remember our innocence alone, and we cannot remember the innocence of others if we do not remember that God created us innocent. Miracles insist on our interconnectedness in Creation, and they also teach us that this unity is a function of our Creator, who cannot know us as other than unified.

Thus, this principle encourages us to recognize the ego can do nothing but perpetuate the illusion of separation, and therefore calls us to accept only the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of experience. This acceptance is a miracle, because it does not depend on our own judgment and does not feed our grievances. Rather, it sees us the way God sees us, and does not see us the way God could never see us.

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 (T-1.II.3:3-4).

In this way, A Course in Miracles – in both our study and practice, in both theory and application – restores to our shared awareness the truth that our identity is found in unconditional love and self-acceptance. This naturally leads to a deeper and more sustainable peace, one that we can extend to all the world, which naturally extends the range of our shared awakening.