Sean Reagan

Miracles are expressions of love, but they may not always have observable effects (T-1.I.35:1).

Most Christian traditional understandings of miracles imply observable effects that appear supernatural. Or at least spectacular enough that nobody could ever call them ordinary. Jesus walking on water, say, or turning water into wine. Closer to home, we win the lottery or the cancer goes into remission.

A Course in Miracles takes a different approach.

The course teaches us that miracles are shifts in perception away from fear and towards love. This perceptual shift shifts our psychological stance away from isolation and dishonesty and towards integrity and self-reliance. We glimpse our true self, the one that God created as an extension of His innocence and perfection. We are literally the site of infinity and eternity remembering themselves.

However, this transformative shift does not always mean that we can “see” it or otherwise take note of it with the body’s senses. Its effects may fall well outside the body’s capacity for attention and awareness. Love is not merely an emotion – much less a prescribed ritual of behavior – but is rather the very ground of our identity and being. How do you “see” seeing? Can you point to attention?

The changes induced by the miracle occur at the level of the mind. While they may have effects in the external world, those effects might be judged negligible. They might even not appear, at least to us. For example, say we have a friend we have long considered too greedy or aggressive. Maybe we see ourselves as victims of his behavior. We did nothing wrong but it always seemed that we ended up hurt. We mean well but the truth is, guilt and fear are the authors of the relationship.

The miracle intervenes on this by allowing us to see clearly our role in the relationship. It allows us to become responsible without feeling guilty. We stop blaming the other and turn the situation over to the Holy Spirit. It’s not a performance for anyone, like a priest or a therapist. ACIM forgiveness liberates our friend from our judgment – because, having taken responsibility for our interior state, we no longer need to project the guilt and fear we find there onto him. We simply give it to the Holy Spirit.

In this way we remember peace.

Nothing has necessarily changed externally but internally everything has changed. We aren’t angry anymore. We aren’t hurt. We aren’t running away from anything. We stop attacking our friend with our fantasies of his guilt.

The change is meaningful in our experience – it makes us happy because we have remembered to decide for peace – but this does not automatically mean that it will lead to observable changes in our external situation or in our relationship with our friend. The gift is, we don’t need the external to change. We practice forgiveness and we allow the situation to evolve as it evolves. We let God’s Will be done rather than insisting we want it to be different.

Happy dreams come true, not because they are dreams, but because they are happy. And so they must be loving. Their message is “Thy will be done,” and not “I want it otherwise” (T-18.V.4:1-3).

The course’s emphasis on internal change reflects its overall teaching that the external world is simply a reflection of our internal state. Therefore, our primary goal is not to change the world, but to change our perception of it. And that, as they say, is an inside job. It is also why miracles can be effective even though they do not appear to change the observable world in any way.

A true miracle transforms perception, which is what forgiveness is, and thus leads to our increased awareness of the Cause for peace and happiness. Our lifelong resistance to this Cause dissolves, even if only a little. Our practice is devoted to this change of mind, independent of the world “out there.” That world shifts and changes all the time and its changes always add up to nothing. All that truly matters is the shift in our mind away from fear and towards love.

Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning for lack they establish perfect protection. The spirit’s strength leaves no room for intrusions (T-1.I.34:1-3).

Miracles – which are shifts in perception away from fear and towards love – testify to what mind is and therefore also witness to the creative power of mind. What mind is is what mind does. The split mind heals itself by recalling its own wholeness; every miracle attests to this.

When the mind is full, it does not recognize lack. When nothing is missing, the mind is free to create as God – its Creator – creates. That is, it creates in love, for love and as love. It does not perpetuate the separation in any way. Rather, it sees beyond the error sustaining separation to what is true. In tha way, it undoes separation entirely.

Healing is not fixing – and atoning is not ownership of – the effects of so-called sin. Rather, healing and atoning are both synonyms for right-seeing – which itself is a synonym for forgiveness in A Course in Miracles. This means that healing and atoning do not recognize the illusion of separation nor any of that illusion’s apparent effects. They do not see and overlook the illusion or its effects. They simply do not recognize it at all. It does not exist.

A Course in Miracles brings us to another level of being and of thinking and of knowing oneself.

When our minds rest in God, without lack and thus with no need to project unfulfillment of any kind, we remember the Holy Spirit’s strength. It is the Holy Spirit who clears our mind of confusion and worry and brings us to peace. When we say that the Holy Spirit allows no intrusions in our mind, we are saying that the ego no longer has a means of raising its bad arguments and mean-spirited logic. The Holy Spirit does not abide ego’s diseased obsession with conflict. It restores the mind to peace.

Ego is the part of the mind that believes in duality, reinforces separation, and always experiences lack because it always projects – always casts out – what is internal. Ego promotes forms of behavior which in turn justify its belief system. With ego, something is always missing. It is the part of us that always feels isolated, alone and incomplete. Ego needs this sense of lack to keep us alert to its voice. Ego promises freedom from suffering and it promises abundance but it never delivers. Never deliving is what the ego is.

In contrast, the Holy Spirit knows that we both have and are everything. There is no cause for conflict anywhere; there is only the Cause for joy and peace. Therefore, miracles are effectively shifts in thinking away from the ego’s view and towards the Holy Spirit’s. To “atone” is to allow an error of separation to be corrected by the Holy Spirit. We don’t correct the error, the Holy Spirit corrects it. We just get out of the way. To atone is to give consent to the Teacher of miracle-minded thinking. We are not, in fact, separate, isolated or incomplete, but are instead interconnected aspects of a unified whole that does not admit division.

When we identify with the ego, we feel vulnerable and threatened. But when we shift our identification to the Holy Spirit, we realize that nothing can actually threaten what we are in truth. We are invulnerable to attack and thus have no need of defense. We are no longer susceptible to the fear and guilt caused by taking on the ego’s perspective of a weakened self in a dangerous world.

Miracles show us – and allow us to remember – that we rest in the peace of God, and extend to others the love that God extends to us. Our natural state of being can only reflect peace and wholeness, and acceptance and love. This is our identity.

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 (T-1.I.33:1-4).

When A Course in Miracles refers to “illusions,” it is pointing to our perceptions – and the beliefs that arise with and sustain those perceptions – which are based on a dualistic view of reality, and thus reinforce the ego’s argument that we are separate from the world and from each other.

That division – self from Creation – begets a literal cosmic daisy chain of additional fragmentation. Judgment enters in an attempt to enforce some order on the ever-expanding illusion. Things are categorized as good and evil, right and wrong, our group and that group. Suddenly “vs.” is showing up everywhere. The appearance of these dichotomies is not the problem; the problem is that we believe they accurately reflect reality. Then the “vs.” stops being a silly game and becomes a cage match to the death.

That single mistaken belief keeps us separated from our true self which does not know division at all, especially not from our Creator or Creation, and is thus free of all conflict.

In this principle, the Course is pointing directly at its intersection with nonduality. Nonduality suggests that everything is a single, interconnected whole. There is no separation anywhere, notwithstanding any appearances to the contrary.

God’s Oneness and ours are not separate, because His Oneness encompasses ours . . . Glory be to the union of God and His holy Sons! All glory lies in Them because They are united (T-8.V.3:1, 5-6).

Thus, when A Course in Miracles refers to miracles dispelling illusions and thereby restoring us to sanity, it is talking about shifting our perception from a dualistic understanding of the world (where we see ourselves as separate from God, others and the cosmos) to a nondualistic understanding in which we both recognize and accept our interconnectedness with all things, living and nonliving alike. We don’t value the appearance of distinctions as anything other than a reminder that all appearances arise from a single error of perception.

This is the radical shift in perception that miracles accomplish, bringing about in us a deep and abiding peace and understanding. We become happy in ways that cannot be easily described but which can be shared. Indeed, they must be shared. How else could they relate to happiness? How else could they bring about happiness?

This happiness is not otherworldly. It’s not supernatural. From a traditional mental health standpoint, the effects of the miracle allow us to release a lot of pent-up fear and guilt, and their cousins such as anger, jealousy, greed and anxiety. As fear and guilt are relieved, and as their symptoms lessen, a renewed sense of inner peace and joy emerges. We do not feel trapped by our feelings nor confused by our thoughts. We are liberated from the tyranny of false thinking. Our living softens and becomes more inclusive and creative. Of course we are happier.

The miracle allows us to redefine our lives in ways that make us more functional and productive. It’s true that underneath these shifts in living, deeper currents are being addressed – such as our separation from God, or our recognition of the equality of all life, both of which instantiate a true commitment to living nonviolently. However, the two levels are not separate. Our psychological wellness at the level of the body and the world is a natural reflection of the underlying coherence that is our true self, when it remembers itself as God’s Creation.

We are fundamentally lovable beings. We are not sinners, we are not trouble-makers, and we are not alien unto the Kingdom of Heaven. The miracle simply reminds us of what we are in truth, which naturally aligns our will with God’s Will, undoing illusions and promoting a calm and quiet mind that knows it is one with Love.

This is a shift from dualism to nondualism, which is transformative at all levels.

I inspire all miracles, which are 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 (T-1.1.32:1-4).

The implication here, of course, is that there are orders in which we are not perfect – or, at least, do not believe we are perfect. And what the Holy Spirit does is transform our perception so that we realize we are perfect – perfect, that is, when we remember what we are in truth.

In this way, the miracle effectively transforms the world brought forth by our limited perception (which includes our ideas about that world) by demonstrating the natural truth of God’s creation. By showing our real self to our self – by bringing us into direct contact with truth – the miracle teaches us our own holiness. It teaches us our own perfection.

More than that, the miracle advocates for our holiness. It advocates for our perfection. When we recognize our holiness, we simultaneously recognize our truth. We recognize that truth is true and remains as God created it. This allows perception to be healed because nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists (T-in.2:2-3). Healed perception always aligns us with the truth as God created it.

You were redeemed the instant you thought you had deserted Him. Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it. Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception is healed (T-12.VIII.6:4-6).

When the Course says that miracles place us “beyond the physical laws” and raise us “into the sphere of celestial order” (T-1.I.32:3), it is saying that the miracle allows us to transcend the limitations of the body’s perception and the world’s conditioning and instead remember that we are minds, God-lit and pure, which together are the nondual light of Love.

And Love holds everything.

Our perceptions of the physical world, along with our ego-based thoughts and beliefs about that world, make an illusory experience of separation – we forget ourselves. We lose ourselves. We lose our confidence and trust – in ourselves, in one another, and in God. We believe we are in adversarial relationships with our neighbors, and that the world is neither fair nor loving. We believe in loss and sacrifice. In that grim world order, of course we are not perfect. Everything we do and everything that exists attests to imperfection.

Yet in the celestial order – the order revealed by the shift in perception from unholiness to holiness, which is the miracle – we remember that we are whole and perfect, united in oneness with all of life. There are no exceptions because love is the absence of exceptions (e.g., W-pI.195.6:2).

When we remember what we are, then we remember that we are perfect. We do not make mistakes, and we do not commit sins. We are not guilty, and need neither to be punished nor to punish. We do not die and we cannot suffer. This is salvation! This is what it means to be born again! This is the remembrance of what we are, never to be forgotten or set aside again.

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 (T-1.I.39:1-2).

In A Course in Miracles, an error is a perception or belief that does not align with reality as God created it. We perceive fear instead of love, fragmentation instead of unity, and falsity instead of truth. These errors arise from a belief system grounded in separation and guilt. They distort our understanding of our true self and our real relationships with one another and with God. They make conflict; they do not create peace.

The correction of this error allows us to perceive love predicated on unity, and to feel the happy effects of that perception. This correction occurs in the context of separation.

Critically, this shift is under the direction of the Holy Spirit, who remembers Creation even as He also perceives the misguided world made by the ego’s lies and misdirection. What the Holy Spirit does is teach us the difference between the two ways of seeing – the one premised on love and union, and the other on fear and separation. He teaches us that the latter is an error, and can be gently laid aside. When we realize that our fear-based beliefs are not grounded in reality as God created it, they lose their power over us. We become open to a new way of seeing and living.

The Holy Spirit teaches us by showing us what we want – inner peace and happiness – and how to get it.

This principle relies on the metaphor of darkness and light, which is common across many religions, including Christianity. Darkness is error; truth is the light. When the light appears – a candle lit, a switch thrown, the sun rising over the eastern hills – then the darkness is undone. This natural feature of the external landscape is mirrored in our minds. As the light of truth dawns in our thinking, our mistaken beliefs are dissolved. We remember who we are and in the remembrance is a cause for joy. The Holy Spirit is our teacher and guide in this process; our role is to be devoted students.

Your only calling here is to devote yourself, with active willingness, to the denial of guilt in all its forms. To accuse is not to understand. The happy learners of the Atonment become the teachers of the innocence that is the right of all that God created (T-14.V.3:5-7).

The way that this principle is brought into application is through questioning every belief that we hold and refusing to decide in advance what the right or best answer will be. We let it all go. We hold onto nothing, which paradoxically is the way to acccept nothing less than happiness and inner peace. We cannot do this alone. We need Jesus and the Holy Spirit in very literal ways, and we need our brothers and sisters to share the learning experience with us. We need them to bolster our courage, let us lean on them as we go, and remind us that we are strong by asking us to help them. This is the way that fear and conflict – which are effects of our confusion about what we are – are corrected by giving everything to the Holy Spirit.

Forgiveness as A Course in Miracles reframes it is an ongoing process of releasing our grievances and judgments and being willing to perceive the world and all its inhabitants as God created them. This means that we don’t decide in advance what Creation looks like or feels like. We surrender all our preconceptions. We are “born again” as blank slates. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit does the heavy lifting. Our part is simply the “little willingness” upon which all salvation rests.

Thus, when we notice that we are experiencing fear (in any of its forms) – and doubling down on it through fear-based behavior (in any of its forms) – we can remember that miracles are natural and always accessible. We can ask the Holy Spirit to show us a different way of seeing, one that restores to our awareness the fundamental unity that governs Creation, including us.

The more “light” that we allow into our mind, the more the errors of perception – and their apparent effects – can be gently undone.